(Reuters)
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, March 9 – Escalating hostilities have forced nearly 700,000 people to flee their homes in Lebanon over the past week, a U.N. agency said on Monday, as the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah entered a second week.
Lebanon has been pulled deep into the war in the Middle East since Hezbollah opened fire to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, igniting an Israeli offensive which has killed nearly 500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities, with the death toll rising by around 100 a day.
On Monday, Israeli strikes sent columns of smoke billowing from Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, and over the hilltops of southern Lebanon.
Security sources in Lebanon said Israeli airstrikes hit five branches of a financial institution run by Hezbollah, Al-Qard Al-Hassan, in the southern suburbs after Israel announced it would act against it.
Hezbollah fired missiles deep into Israel, setting off air raid sirens in central Israel and its commercial hub Tel Aviv, as interception blasts sounded as far as Jerusalem.
