Lebanon has been witnessing another bloodstained day as intense Israeli shelling has killed at least 105 people in the whole of Lebanon while injuring 359 others, health officials said.

Health Ministry said one attack in Ain al-Delb near southern Sidon flattened two residential buildings, killing 32 people in Lebanon. Most of its victims were displaced families staying at the site. Several Lebanese politicians have described the attack as a “massacre”.

While Israel said it had attacked dozens of Hezbollah targets, Lebanon officials said the bombardment hit homes and buildings in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa, Baalbek-Hermel governorate, and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

On Monday at dawn, the local media reported that the Israeli forces carried out an air raid on the Kola bridge area in the centre of Beirut. The bombing will be for the first time within city limits since last year’s starting conflict. Several regions were hit during Monday Israeli air strikes targeting the nation’s airport and southern cities and suburbs. The Lebanese army said it witnessed both Iranian and Syrian troops.

The bombing of municipal Beirut suggests that the Lebanese capital, once a haven from Israeli attacks, is in the line of fire as well – like so much of the rest of the country. At least three people were killed, according to Lebanese news outlets.

It came two days after Israel assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an enormous series of air raids in the southern suburbs of Beirut that flattened several buildings. The Israeli military also killed senior Hezbollah political official Sheikh Nabil Kaouk on Sunday.

The group has not announced succession plans for who will replace its slain leader, whose face had become increasingly familiar in the past confrontations between the group and Israel, including the liberation of south Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000.

Displacement crisis

Hezbollah dismissed media reports on Sunday regarding plans to replace Nasrallah. The resistance movement stressed that any news regarding organisational changes within the group has no value “unless confirmed by an official statement” from the party.

Despite the heavy damage the Israeli assassinations have waged against Hezbollah’s political and military leadership, the group continued to launch attacks against Israel on Sunday. Hezbollah said it had carried out several military raids on Israeli bases and launched one missile attack on the city of Safad.

Israel pounded Lebanon with its most intense bombing campaign yet yesterday, September 23, as it purported to step up efforts to push Hezbollah off its border. Hundreds have been killed, and villages and towns sprawled across Lebanon – especially in the south of the country – lie in ruins.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said as much as 1 million people have been displaced by the violence, calling Israel’s actions “criminal operations daily” across the country.

Mikati said about 118,000 displaced people were staying at 778 designated shelters, but the number was much larger, with many staying with friends and relatives or renting out their places.

“Some one million people moved from one place to another in days in the biggest displacement crisis in the region,” he said. When Israel began to attack south Lebanon earlier this month, it advised people to vacate places where Hezbollah may be stashing its arsenals before bombarding homes in hundreds of villages across the area in an unprecedented campaign.

Then, before dawn on Saturday, the Israeli military issued evacuee orders for large sections of southern Beirut’s suburbs – a form of forced displacement directive akin to those employed in Gaza over the last year. That has sent thousands scurrying for Beirut’s city limits. Many people have been sleeping in the city’s streets and beaches.

International charity Lutheran World Relief national director Ali Hijazi said people are being forced out of their homes in minutes with little belongings for the sake of their lives. “They are now living in fear, and they are going to the unknown,” Hijazi said. “They are terrified and worried whether this crisis will last longer … they are in limbo.”

Escalation

Hezbollah and Israel have been battling each other daily since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza. The Lebanese militant group says it will keep pounding Israeli bases in the north of the country until Israel ends its offensive in Gaza. For months, the violence was confined to the border region. But earlier this month, Israel launched an escalatory campaign against Hezbollah.

On September 17 and 18, booby-trapped wireless communication devices linked to Hezbollah exploded throughout Lebanon, injuring thousands of people and killing dozens, including several civilians. Lebanon accused Israel of the unprecedented attack.

Days later, an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut targeting a senior Hezbollah commander killed at least 45 people and injured dozens more.

Now, the fighting seems to be taking on a feature of a full-scale war. Yemen’s Houthis and Iran-tied Iraqi armed groups also launched missiles and drones at Israel for supporting Hezbollah and Palestinian groups in Gaza.

On Sunday, Israel launched air raids at the ports and power plants in Yemen. However, the Israeli military has not shown any reluctance to continue its onslaught in Gaza, which killed more than 41,500 Palestinians, destroying large parts of this territory.