Like every morning, Ali Abu Khudoud woke up just before dawn on Sunday to perform the fajr prayer. His daily ritual, however, was interrupted when the windows began to rattle and his house shake. As the sound of dozens of low-flying war planes and airstrikes grew louder, it became clear that this was more than the occasional bout of shelling he had gotten used to.
“It was a very hard night and an even harder morning. My daughter woke up and began to call for me. It feels like it’s too near, nobody could sleep,” Abu Khudoud, a shopkeeper in the city of Nabatieh in south Lebanon, said.
On Sunday, Israel carried out its most intense aerial barrage on Lebanon since the war in Gaza began in October, launching more than 40 airstrikes across nearly 30 locations. Israeli officials claimed the attack was pre-emptive, directed at Hezbollah missile launchers aimed at targets inside Israel, detected by intelligence agencies the day before.
Lebanon’s health ministry said three people were killed in the airstrikes, with two more injured. Hezbollah and its allied political party, Amal, announced the death of three of their fighters a few hours later.
Despite the flurry of airstrikes, Hezbollah proceeded with an attack of its own, hitting 11 military sites across Israel with a combination of drones and more than 320 Katyusha rockets. In a statement, the Lebanese group said it was the “first phase” of a retaliation for Israel’s killing of its top military commander, Fouad Shukur, in Beirut nearly a month earlier.
Hezbollah left the door open for further attacks, saying its retaliation could “take some time”.
Sunday’s back-and-forth attacks were the latest escalation in more than 10-months of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel since Hamas’s 7 October attack. Though Israel and Hezbollah have generally contained their attacks within what observers have called the “rules of engagement”, the conflict nonetheless has gradually escalated.
The assassinations of Shukur in Beirut and then the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran have brought the conflict to a fever pitch, and raised fears of a war that could engulf the entire region.
Hezbollah and Iran promised a “serious” retaliation for the dual killings, sending diplomats into overdrive and causing Israeli officials to raise the alarm of an imminent attack on at least three occasions.
The months of fighting have begun to take a toll on the residents of south Lebanon, who live under the sound of bombing and the threat of a wider war.
“This war, it must be stopped, it’s gone on for too long. If armies want to fight each other, go ahead, but here there are civilians, kids and babies,” Abu Khudoud said. Six months prior, in February, two Israeli missiles struck the building across the street from his shop, killing his close friend and six members of their family.
At the time, the attack was the deadliest for civilians. Last week, it was surpassed after 10 Syrian nationals were killed in a single airstrike in Nabatieh.
The intensification in fighting has prompted renewed displacement in south Lebanon for the first time in months. About 12,000 people have fled south Lebanon since the beginning of August, bringing the total number to over 110,000 displaced.
Villages once considered safe have been emptied out as the battlefield in south Lebanon expands.
An attack on the village of Aita Jabal on Saturday caused much of the town’s population to flee to cities more northward. The village is far from the Lebanese-Israeli border, and had been previously used as a refuge for those fleeing cross-border fighting.
Most of those in the villages within 3 miles (5km) of the border have left already. Constant Israeli airstrikes have reduced wide swathes of towns to rubble, and the buzz of drones overhead act as a reminder that no one is truly safe.
The few that have chosen to stay are emergency workers, elderly people and those that say they have a duty to defend their land.
“People have no other option, they have to stay. They have to remain steadfast and patient. We have decided to stay on the border and defend the Lebanese people,” Abu Ali Chkeir, the mayor of Mays al-Jabal, one of the hardest hit border towns in Lebanon, said.
He shrugged off the idea that the fighting on Sunday was exceptional, insisting this was part of the price to pay in a war.
“This is nothing new, to hear warplanes, strikes, destruction. This is a daily occurrence. There are rules, you hit us, we will hit you. It’s a part of the conflict,” Chkeir said.
