Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired heavy rocket fire at Israel on Sunday, and the Israeli military said some houses were destroyed or set on fire near Tel Aviv after an attack .
Israel also struck Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, where intensified shelling over the past two weeks has coincided with signs of progress in U.S.-led ceasefire talks.
Hezbollah, which had previously vowed to respond to attacks on Beirut by targeting Tel Aviv, said it fired precision missiles at two military sites in and around Tel Aviv.
Police said there were several crash sites in the Petah Tikva area of eastern Tel Aviv and that several people suffered minor injuries.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a direct hit on a neighborhood left “houses in flames and ruins”. Television footage showed an apartment damaged by rocket fire.
The IDF said Hezbollah fired 240 rockets at Israel, many of which were intercepted, with sirens sounding across much of the country. At least four people were injured by shrapnel.
The army warned on social media that it intended to target Hezbollah facilities in south Beirut ahead of attacks that demolished two apartment buildings, according to Lebanese security sources.
Subsequently, the IDF claimed to have struck command centers “deliberately nestled between civilian buildings”.
It had taken place on Saturday .
Lebanon’s Health Ministry on Sunday raised the death toll from 20 to 29. It said a total of 84 people were killed on Saturday, bringing the death toll to 3,754 since October 2023.
The IDF did not comment on Saturday’s strike in the capital or say what it attacked.
Israel launched the offensive against Iran-backed Hezbollah in September, hitting the south, the Bekaa Valley and the southern outskirts of Beirut with airstrikes, after nearly a year of hostilities sparked by the Gaza war.
The Israeli offensive has uprooted more than a million people in Lebanon.
Israel says its goal is to ensure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from the north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
US mediator Amos Hochstein highlighted progress in negotiations during a visit to Beirut last week, before traveling to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, before returning to Washington.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday that an American ceasefire proposal awaits final approval by Israel.
Diplomacy has focused on restoring a ceasefire based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. It requires Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters approximately 30 km from the Israeli border and that the Lebanese army deploys in the buffer zone.
