Multiple injuries in Haifa and Tel Aviv as Hezbollah, Hamas fire rockets into Israel

Oct. 7 (UPI) -- At least five people were injured overnight in the northern Israeli city of Haifa in a barrage of rockets launched from Lebanon as Hezbollah and Israel traded attacks with Israel Defense Forces striking Beirut and targets in the east and south of the country.

The injured were hit by shrapnel after a restaurant, a house and a main road were struck in the port city after five rockets got through with a fifth person hurt in a separate rocket strike on the town of Tiberias, 37 miles to the east on the Sea of Galilee.

The Times of Israel quoted Haifa's Rambam Hospital as saying one of the injured was in moderate condition and the other four had slight injuries.

Claiming responsibility for the attack, Hezbollah said it had fired short-range "Fadi 1" missiles at a military base south of Haifa.

It also said it targeted rockets on Kfar Vradim and Karmiel , northeast of Haifa. Karmiel took two direct hits, damaging more than 60 apartments, 20 cars and crippling five EV buses.

The Israeli military said it was investigating how the rockets penetrated air defenses .

"Interceptors were fired. Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review," the IDF said.

The Israeli military pummeled southern Beirut with earthshaking airstrikes targeting what it said were Hezbollah weapons and storage facilities, including a building on the road to the airport, with powerful explosions triggering secondary blasts.

There were also more attacks in southern Lebanon with at least eight people killed in the center of Baraachit on Monday morning in an airstrike on the town's fire department, the state-run Lebanese National News Agency reported.

The latest strikes brought protests from Lebanese lawmakers who said they were "disproportionate."

"Lebanon is under a heavy attack. There's no proportionality in the response of Israel to what is considered as attacks from Hezbollah," MP Melhem Khalaf told the BBC.

"Bombing civilians, destroying entire villages, flattening hundreds of houses and buildings, killing innocents in its attempt to assassinate whomever Israel considers a terrorist."

As Israelis marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks a year ago, southern and central areas of the country also came under airborne attack from Hamas which fired 10 rockets, five of them at Tel Aviv, from the south of the Gaza strip, slightly injuring two women.

The women were being treated in hospital where their condition was said to be "good," according to the Israeli Ambulance Service.

The IDF, warning that the attacks would be met with "extreme force," issued evacuation orders to Palestinians in four areas in the east of Khan Yunis.

"To all those present in the Bani Suhaila, Al-Mahta, Sheikh Nasser and Maan areas in the southern Gaza Strip: Due to Hamas' terrorist actions, which will be met with extreme force, you must evacuate these areas immediately and move to the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi," IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X .

A year on from the war that began with thousands of Iran-backed Hamas militants and fighters from other groups storming southern Israel committing atrocities and killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage has widened into a regional conflict fought on several fronts.

As Israel mourned the loss of 28-year-old Idan Shativ, one of dozens of Israelis kidnapped from the Nova music festival, was confirmed dead Monday by a nonprofit dedicated to securing the release of hostages, the toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli military action in Gaza action reached 41,909 and 97,303 injured, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which it initiated Sept. 23 after a year of rocket fire into northern Israel, has killed as many as 2,000 people and displaced at least 1 million from their homes, most in southern Lebanon but also across the country in Beirut and the Bakaa Valley, east of the capital.