Hezbollah targets Haifa, threatens to attack central, north and south Israel

Hezbollah threatened Tuesday to attack targets across Israel and said it would not be defeated by ongoing intense bombardment of its strongholds and leadership.

In the latest exchanges during the conflict, the group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa, while Israel carried out air strikes in several areas of Lebanon.

A defiant Hezbollah "will not be defeated" in its war with Israel, the group's deputy chief Naim Qassem said in a speech.

"Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place" in Israel, "whether the center, the north or the south," he said.

"I am telling the Israeli home front: the solution is a ceasefire," he added.

Iran, which supports Hezbollah, has in recent days engaged in diplomatic talks around establishing a ceasefire in Lebanon and war-battered Gaza amid growing fears of a broader regional conflict.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati told AFP that his country was ready to bolster its military presence in the south after any ceasefire, adding that Israeli troops were making brief cross-border incursions.

Security has been tightened in the country's only airport in Beirut "to remove any pretexts" for an Israeli attack, Mikati added.

Israel has also been intensifying its offensive in the besieged Gaza Strip, which the United Nations warned Tuesday is suffering under its worst aid restrictions since the war there began over a year ago.

- 'National interest' -

Israel is also weighing how to respond to Iran's decision to launch about 200 missiles at the country on October 1.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that Israel -- and not its top ally the United States -- would decide how to strike back.

The Iranian barrage was in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan on September 27.

U.S. President Joe Biden -- whose government is Israel's top arms supplier -- has warned Israel against striking Iran's nuclear or oil facilities in order to avoid broader war.

According to a Washington Post report on Monday citing unnamed U.S. officials, Netanyahu reassured the White House that Israel was only contemplating targeting military sites.

Oil prices -- which soared after Iran's attack on Israel -- tumbled by more than five percent following the report.

A statement from Netanyahu's office on Tuesday took a different tone.

"We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest," the statement said.

Also on Tuesday, top Iranian commander Esmail Qaani -- whose absence sparked rumors that he could have been killed in an Israeli strike -- appeared in public for the first time in weeks when he attended Nilforoushan's funeral in Tehran.

- 'Violent night' -

Israel's military launched several strikes in Lebanon on Tuesday, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon's official National News Agency reported.

"It was a violent night in Baalbek, we have not witnessed a similar one since" the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, 50-year-old resident Nidal al-Solh told AFP.

An Israeli strike on the northern, Christian-majority village of Aito on Monday is believed to have killed 21 people, including 12 women and two children, according to the U.N.

The U.N. rights office called for a "prompt, independent and thorough investigation" of the strike.

At least 1,315 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel last month escalated its bombing there, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

The war in Lebanon has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to verified figures last week from the International Organization for Migration.

Lebanon's health ministry said that 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Monday.

"41 people have been killed and 124 injured" the ministry said Tuesday, in "Israeli strikes on Lebanon yesterday," including 21 in the northern village of Aito. The newest figures bring the overall death toll since Israel on September 23 launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon to 1,356.