Israel and Hezbollah threaten to hit harder, raising fears of all-out war

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a top Hezbollah leader vowed Sunday to increase the intensity of their cross-border attacks, raising fears that the renewed conflict could escalate into all-out war.

The Hezbollah official, Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem, said the Lebanese militia had entered "a new stage" of open warfare against Israel, while Netanyahu said his nation would take "whatever action is necessary" to diminish the threat posed by its adversary.

The statements came after a tumultuous week of hostilities.

Early Sunday, Hezbollah launched about 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones, according to the Israeli military, targeting what appeared to be the deepest areas it has hit in Israel since the group began firing on it in October, a day after Hamas-led forces attacked southern Israel. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been engaging in tit-for-tat attacks.

Israel's military said its air defenses had intercepted most of the projectiles fired from Lebanon. One hit Kiryat Bialik, a town of 45,000 just north of Haifa. At least four people were wounded by shrapnel in northern Israel on Sunday, according to Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency rescue service.

Referring to the strikes, Qassem said that "what happened last night is just the beginning."

"We will kill them and fight them from where they expect and from where they do not expect," the militant leader told thousands of people gathered in Dahiya, the Hezbollah-dominated neighborhood in southern Beirut, for the funeral of two Hezbollah commanders killed in an Israeli airstrike Friday.

Israel fired airstrikes into southern Lebanon on Sunday that killed at least three people and wounded four others, according to Lebanon's ministry of health. The ministry also raised the death toll from Israel's airstrike Friday in Beirut, reporting that at least 45 people had been killed.

Before Qassem's comments, Netanyahu appeared to double down on his country's decision to step up its attacks against Hezbollah. He said Israel wanted to repel Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis displaced over the past year could return to their homes in northern Israel. More than 150,000 people on both sides of the border have been driven out by the fighting.

Netanyahu's comments came less than a week after booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah militants exploded across Lebanon -- an attack for which Israel has not explicitly taken responsibility -- killing dozens, injuring thousands and severely disrupting the group's communications.