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Israel struck the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh on Tuesday following a military evacuation order, as Israeli troops pushed beyond a self-imposed boundary in south Lebanon and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for an intensified campaign to "crush" Hezbollah.
An Israeli military official confirmed that ground forces had begun operating past the so-called "Yellow Line," an Israeli-designated demarcation running roughly 10 kilometers inside Lebanese territory. The expansion marked a significant deepening of Israeli operations in a country already battered by months of strikes since the war resumed on March 2.
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman, posted on X that all residents of Nabatieh "must evacuate your homes immediately and move north of the Zahrani River," warning that anyone near Hezbollah members or equipment was putting their life at risk.
Hezbollah said its fighters confronted Israeli troops attempting to enter Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, a town overlooking Nabatieh, early Tuesday following airstrikes and heavy artillery fire. The group said it deployed drones and engaged Israeli soldiers directly in the town.
The latest escalation followed a deadly Monday airstrike on Mashghara, a town in the West Bekaa valley in eastern Lebanon. Lebanon's health ministry said the attack resulted in at least 11 deaths, among them two girls and a woman, with 15 others wounded including a child. Rescue workers were still clearing rubble from the site on Tuesday.
The Israeli military said it launched several strikes in the Mashghara area targeting what it described as "Hezbollah infrastructure sites where terrorists' activity was identified." It later issued evacuation warnings for Mashghara and the nearby town of Sohmor.
Netanyahu, in remarks released Monday on Telegram, ordered what he called "an even greater acceleration" of operations against Hezbollah. "We will intensify our blows, increase our firepower, and we will crush them," he said, acknowledging that the group had been deploying fiber-optic drones while asserting that Israeli teams were developing countermeasures.
Strikes also hit near a dam on the Litani River's Qaraoun lake in eastern Lebanon, drawing an urgent warning from the Litani River Authority. The authority cautioned that any targeting of the Qaraoun Dam "could lead to catastrophic risks for residents, infrastructure, and vital installations in the areas downstream," calling on Lebanon's president, prime minister and government to pursue international and diplomatic intervention to protect the facility.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported strikes across southern and eastern Lebanon throughout the day. A strike on the southern town of Srifa killed one rescue worker and wounded two others from the Risala Scouts association, which is linked to the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement, according to the health ministry, bringing the total number of rescue workers killed in the war to 120.
Hezbollah claimed drone attacks Tuesday on an Israeli army barracks in northern Israel. The Israeli army said it intercepted several explosive drones launched from Lebanon toward Israeli territory, while acknowledging that additional drones landed inside Israel near the border, though it reported no injuries.
Panic gripped the historic coastal city of Tyre on Monday after Israeli evacuation warnings prompted a mass exodus of residents. The Israeli military said it struck more than 100 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon overnight.
The conflict, which Hezbollah triggered on March 2 by attacking Israel in solidarity with Iran, has killed more than 3,100 people in Lebanon according to Lebanese authorities, despite an April 17 truce that has done little to stem the fighting. Nabatieh, a provincial capital in the south, has been largely deserted since the war began and has faced sustained strikes throughout the conflict.
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