Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel's third largest city Haifa yesterday as Israeli forces looked poised to expand ground raids into south Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Gaza offensive, which has spread conflict across the Middle East.

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

The spiralling conflict has raised concerns that the United States, Israel's superpower ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing Middle East.

An Israeli military statement said five rockets were launched at Haifa from Lebanon and interceptors were fired at them. It said 15 other rockets were fired inland at Tiberias in Israel's northern Galilee region, some of which were shot down. Israel media said a further five rockets hit the Tiberias area.

Police said some buildings and properties were damaged, and there were reports of minor injuries, with some people taken to a nearby hospital. A surface-to-surface missile fired from Yemen at central Israel yesterday was intercepted, the Israeli military said.

Hamas also targeted Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv with a missile salvo, the group said, setting off sirens in central areas of the country.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that Israel would pay a price for the "genocide" in Gaza as he marked the first anniversary of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon, and that two Israeli soldiers were killed in border-area combat, taking the military death toll inside Lebanon so far to 11.