JERUSALEM: Israel was preparing a military response to Iran's missile attack this week that heightened fears of a wider regional war, an Israeli official said Saturday, as fighting raged in Lebanon and in Gaza.
In its second-ever direct attack on its regional foe, the Islamic republic which backs armed groups across the Middle East on Tuesday launched some 200 missiles at Israel in revenge for a spate of Israeli killings of leaders.
The missile attack, which killed one person in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, caused some damage to an Israeli air base according to satellite images.
It came as Israeli ground forces began raids into Lebanon after days of intense strikes on Hizbollah strongholds across Lebanon, transforming nearly a year of cross-border exchanges with the Iran-backed fighters into full-blown war.
The Israeli military official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the issue publicly, said that the army "is preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack."
He did not elaborate on the nature or timing of the response, which analysts and Israeli media said was likely designed to deal an immense blow to Iran, despite international calls for de-escalation and warnings from Tehran it would retaliate if counterattacked.
Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, told AFP that both Israel and Iran were "taking huge gambles."
"Everything right now hinges on Israel's response," he said.
Rapidly escalating violence this week also included intensifying Hizbollah rocket fire and strikes on Israel claimed by allies of Iran from as far away as Yemen, just days before the first anniversary of Hamas's October 7 attack.
Nearly a year into the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack, Israel has shifted its focus north, saying it aims to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hizbollah attacks to return home.
Hizbollah said Saturday its fighters were confronting Israeli troops in Lebanon's southern border region, where the Israeli military said it struck fighters inside a mosque.
The Israeli military said its forces were engaged in "limited, localised" raids in southern Lebanon, though the scale of their operations was not immediately clear.
The army reported frequent rocket fire from Lebanon, some of which was intercepted by air defences, as Hizbollah claimed a rocket attack on northern Israel's Ramat David air base, some 45 kilometres (30 miles) from the frontier.
In the first reported Israeli air strike on the northern Tripoli region in the current flare-up, Palestinian group Hamas said "Zionist bombardment" of the Beddawi refugee camp killed one of its commanders, Saeed Attallah Ali, as well as his wife and two daughters on Saturday.
In downtown Beirut, Ibrahim Nazzal, who is among hundreds of thousands displaced by the violence, said: "We want the war to stop... all our homes are gone."
Across Lebanon, an intensified wave of strikes on Hizbollah strongholds killed more than 1,110 people since September 23, according to the health ministry.
The state-run National News Agency said that about a dozen strikes hit the Lebanese capital's southern suburbs overnight, with a fresh raid on Saturday around noon (0900 GMT). It also reported more Israeli strikes in Lebanon's south and east.
In Hizbollah's south Beirut bastion, an AFP photographer saw some buildings reduced to rubble and fire raging in another.
In a nearby neighbourhood, 62-year-old cook Abu Abbas told AFP he had kept his small eatery open "every morning."
"Even with the strikes that are becoming increasingly heavy each night... I cannot leave home," he said.
Arriving in Lebanon, the head of the UN's refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, said "Lebanon faces a terrible crisis" and warned "hundreds of thousands of people are left destitute or displaced by Israeli air strikes."
Israel's recent attacks on Lebanon have killed an Iranian general, a host of Hizbollah commanders and, in the biggest blow to the group in decades, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivering a rare public sermon on Friday, said that "the resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms."
Lebanon said an Israeli strike on Friday cut off the main international road to Syria, which was used by many seeking refuge across the border. Israel said it aimed to prevent the flow of weapons.
Israeli bombardment has also put at least four hospitals in Lebanon out of service.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon urged commitment "in actions, not just words" to Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbollah and stipulated that only the Lebanese army and peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, visiting Damascus on Saturday after a stop in Beirut, said: "The most important issue today is the ceasefire, especially in Lebanon and in Gaza."
President Joe Biden said the United States, Israel's top military supplier, was working to "rally the rest of the world" to prevent the fighting from spreading even further.
US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators tried unsuccessfully for months to reach a Gaza truce and secure the release of 97 hostages still held in the Hamas-ruled territory.
Medics and rescuers said Israeli fire early Saturday killed at least 12 people across Gaza.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said a child was killed in "a missile attack" that hit a makeshift displacement camp near a central Gaza school, where the Israeli military said it targeted fighters.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,825 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the territory's health ministry and described as reliable by the UN.
For the first time in weeks, Israel told Palestinians to evacuate an area in central Gaza warning that troops were preparing to use "great force" against Hamas fighters around the strategic Netzarim Corridor.--AFP