[Source: Reuters]

Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s third-largest city Haifa and Israel looked poised to expand its offensive into Lebanon on Monday, one year after the devastating Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.

Israelis held ceremonies and protests to mark the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack as the Gaza conflict has spread across the Middle East and raised fears of all-out regional war.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally in Lebanon of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.

The armed group later said it also targeted areas north of Haifa with missiles. Israel’s military said around 135 projectiles had entered Israeli territory on Monday as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). Ten people were reported injured in the Haifa area and two others further south in central Israel.

Israel’s military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon and two Israeli soldiers were killed, taking the Israeli military death toll inside Lebanon to 11.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported dozens of deaths, including 10 firefighters killed in an airstrike on a municipal building in the border area, and 22 other people killed in air attacks on Sunday.

Around 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Hezbollah began firing at Israel a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, most of them in the past few weeks.

The Israeli military has described its ground operation in Lebanon as “localized, limited and targeted” but it has steadily increased in scale since it began last week.

Israel’s superpower ally, the United States, believes the Lebanon ground operation continues to be limited, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

Israel’s military said soldiers from its 91st Division moved into southern Lebanon after a year of operations in northern Israel.

Last week, the military said regular armoured and infantry units moved into Lebanon after commandos crossed the border a day earlier. It said their aim was to clear border areas where Hezbollah fighters have been embedded, with no plans to go deep into Lebanon.

Also on Monday, Israel within the space of an hour carried out air strikes on 120 targets in southern Lebanon, including against Radwan special forces units, Hezbollah’s missile force and its intelligence directorate.

The spiralling conflict has raised concerns that the United States and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing region.

Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1. Israel has said it will retaliate and is weighing its options. Iran’s oil facilities are a possible target.