The group confirmed the strikes were an initial response to the killing of Fouad Shukur, a top commander with the group, in a strike in Beirut‘s southern suburbs last month.

Hezbollah said their barrage had completed ‘the first phase’ of their response into and that their full response ‘would take some time’.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said: ‘In a self-defense act to remove these threats, the (Israeli military) is striking terror targets in Lebanon, from which Hezbollah was planning to launch their attacks on Israeli civilians.

Hagari warned Hezbollah would ‘soon fire rockets, and possibly missiles and drones’ into Israel.

An intelligence official told The New York Times that Israel’s preemptive attack was aimed at missile launchers that had been programmed to fire at 5 a.m. local time towards Tel Aviv.

The official told the outlet that all the launchers that had been targeted were destroyed, and that Israel was anticipating a harsh response from Hezbollah.

Sirens began sounding in northern Israel soon after the warning from the Israeli military, and additional sirens later joined in across the north.

Lebanese media reported strikes in the country’s south without immediately providing more details. Social media footage showed what appeared to be strikes in southern Lebanon.

After the initial barrage, Lebanon’s state-run news agency said that the strikes had been ‘the most violent’ since the war in Gaza erupted last year.

A least two people were injured, one critically, and the strikes caused ‘sever damge’ to local infrastructure including electricity and water supplies.

In a follow up statement, Hezbollah said they had fired over 320 rockets at almost a dozen Israeli military bases. It isn’t clear if any of the rockets hit their targets.

In his statement, Hagari added: ‘We can see that Hezbollah is preparing to launch an extensive attack on Israel, while endangering the Lebanese civilians.

‘We warn the civilians located in the areas where Hezbollah is operating to move out of harm’s way immediately for their own safety’. Hagari didn’t provide additional details on the intelligence he cited.

While the IDF X page added: ‘Hezbollah has just launched over 150 projectiles from Lebanon toward Israeli territory. We target terrorist infrastructure, they target civilians.’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, were managing the latest operation from military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

He said: We are determined to do everything to protect our country, return the residents of the north safely to their homes and continue to uphold a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.’

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean Savett, said President Joe Biden was ‘closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon’.