Hezbollah has carried on rocketing Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, Monday as Israeli forces prepare to crank up ground operations in southern Lebanon. The strikes occurred on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has sharply escalated the stakes across the Middle East.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, a militant group that has been supportive of Hamas, claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks. The group said it hit a military base to the south of Haifa with its ‘Fadi 1’ rockets and also launched strikes toward Tiberias, 65 kilometers away. Later in the day, additional missiles were fired at northern Haifa.

Israel’s military says some 135 projectiles have entered its territory on Monday. Ten people were injured in the Haifa area, with two reported injured further south in central Israel.

In retaliation, the Israeli air force carried out sweeping attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said two soldiers had been killed in combat near the border. The Lebanese health ministry meanwhile reported that at least 10 firefighters had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a municipal building in the town of Bint Jbeil.

Israel’s military described its ground operation as “localized, limited, and targeted,” but the scale has changed over the past week. On Monday, troops from Israel’s Army 91st Division were sent to southern Lebanon. Within more or less the same timeframe, nearly 100 Israeli fighter jets carried out a series of airstrikes and destroyed 120 Hezbollah targets in under an hour. Israel hit Hezbollah’s Radwan special forces, its rocket units, and the group’s intelligence directorate, all aimed at weakening command and control capabilities to help ground forces succeed in reaching strategic goals, a military statement said.

Five rockets were fired from Lebanon toward the Haifa area, reported the Israeli military. Intervening interceptor missiles were launched, and some of the projectiles fell into open areas. The military said the attack is under review. In addition, 15 rockets were fired at Tiberias in northern Israel’s Galilee region, some of which appeared to have been intercepted. Still, several missiles hit the Tiberias area later in the day. The media also reported that a surface-to-air missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before it reached central Israel.

Meanwhile, Hamas launched a rocket attack on Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial capital, prompting an alert by air-raid sirens throughout central parts of the country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special cabinet meeting, saying, “We are changing the security reality in our region to ensure what happened on Oct 7 does not happen again.”

Its humanitarian toll has been devastating in part because the conflict has been ongoing: 1.2 million have been displaced inside Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes. Monday also marked the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7. Israeli events to commemorate both the Hamas fighters who killed 364 and the 44 who were taken hostage took place.

This follows the Hamas attack, in which militants have killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, according to Israeli figures. Israel has launched a major operation on Gaza, which has damaged the densely populated area, having reported nearly 42,000 deaths since the beginning of the war, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Later Monday night, Israeli military sirens were heard again in central Israel after detecting five projectiles crossing from Lebanon. Some were intercepted; others fell into uninhabited areas. Hezbollah later said it was responsible for a rocket attack aimed at an Israeli military intelligence unit near Tel Aviv, specifically at the Glilot base of Unit 8200.

The war continued to spiral with no immediate end because both sides started competing aggressively militarily.