• Israel targets over 800 'Hezbollah sites'
• Hezbollah retaliates by firing rockets at Israeli base

Israel launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets yesterday, killing 356 people and sending tens of thousands fleeing for safety on Lebanon's deadliest day in decades, according to authorities.

After some of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since the hostilities flared last October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the armed movement was storing weapons.

Nasser Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89 temporary shelters in schools and the like had been activated, with capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled "Israeli atrocities".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the Lebanese people.

"Israel's war is not with you; it's with Hezbollah. For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields," he said.

After almost a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern border, Israel is shifting its focus to the northern frontier, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, also supported by Iran.

Israel's military said it had struck Hezbollah in Lebanon's south, east and north.

Lebanon's health ministry said 356 people had been killed, including 24 children and 42 women, and 1,246 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon's highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.

The Israeli air force said on X it had carried out about 650 strike missions in the past 24 hours, attacking more than 1,100 targets using more than 1,400 munitions, hitting buildings vehicles and other places where it said weapons were stored.

Hezbollah has not commented on Israeli claims that it hid weapons in houses, which Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place military infrastructure near civilians.

In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern Israel.

In New York, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

"It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict," he told journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the UN General Assembly, saying the consequences of such instability would be irreversible.