Air raid sirens echoed across northern Israel, sending hundreds of thousands of people scrambling into shelters. One rocket struck near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a city near Haifa, wounding at least three people and setting buildings and cars on fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said four people were wounded by shrapnel in the barrage. Avi Vazana raced to a shelter with his wife and 9-month-old baby before he heard the boom of the rocket hitting in Kiryat Bialik. Then he went back outside to see if anyone was hurt “I ran without shoes, without a shirt, only with pants. I ran to this house when everything was still on fire to try to find if there are other people,” he said. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that three people were killed and another four wounded in Israeli strikes near the border, without saying whether they were civilians or combatants.

“We have a strong and capable resistance,” he said. “All of its options are on the table, and it is prepared for any scenario, war or confrontation.” The Israeli military said it carried out strikes across southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours, hitting about 400 militant sites, including rocket launchers. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said those strikes had thwarted an even larger attack. “Hundreds of thousands of civilians have come under fire across a lot of northern Israel,” he said. “Today we saw fire that was deeper into Israel than before.”

The military also said it had intercepted multiple aerial devices fired from the direction of Iraq after Iran-backed militant groups there claimed to have launched a drone attack on Israel. The school was canceled across northern Israel, and the Health Ministry said all hospitals in the north would begin moving operations to protected areas within the medical centers. Meanwhile, the US urged its citizens not to travel to Lebanon and those who are there to depart “due to the unpredictable nature of the ongoing conflict”.

The US State Department updated its travel warning to Lebanon to level 4 Saturday and called on US citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options remain available. “If the security situation worsens, commercial options to depart may become unavailable. The US Embassy (in Lebanon) may not be able to assist US citizens who choose to remain,” it cautioned. It added that those who choose to remain in Lebanon should be prepared to shelter in place if the situation deteriorates further. It strongly encourages US citizens in Southern Lebanon, near the borders with Syria, and/or in refugee settlements to depart those areas immediately. It advised citizens to “Do Not Travel to Lebanon due to crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, unexploded landmines, and the risk of armed conflict.

Some areas, especially near the borders, have increased risk”. In a separate development, Israeli forces raided the West Bank bureau of Al-Jazeera, which it had banned earlier this year, accusing it of serving as a mouthpiece for militant groups, allegations denied by the pan-Arab broadcaster. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The low-level fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, and hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the frontier.