Israel-Hezbollah conflict: Haifa in northern Israel becomes virtual ghost town amid Hezbollah strikes

Haifa, a once bustling city in northern Israel and a tourist hotspot, has virtually turned into a ghost town as tensions have escalated with cross-border fighting between the Israeli military and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

The Israeli military has urged people to remain indoors and not venture out unnecessarily.

Just three days ago, Hezbollah had fired some 100 rockets from southern Lebanon at Haifa Bay and other northern Israeli areas.

India Today’s Gaurav Sawant reached ground zero today. Streets of Haifa bore a deserted look. Some men stayed behind to look after their homes.

Shlome Haskel, a resident of Haifa, and a former Israeli navy officer, described the situation as bad.

“The situation is bad. People should stay in their homes and not go outside. Generally, on Saturdays, hundreds of people go out and visit restaurants and places of interest. But now, nobody is here. It is empty. The Lebanon border is situated 5-7 km from here. I will go there to see the situation,” Haskel told India Today TV.

For the past few weeks, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has been pounding southern Lebanon for nearly three weeks as it targeted Hezbollah.

Cross-border fighting began on October 8 last year after Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel in support of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group fighting against the Jewish nation in Gaza.

Israel began a limited ground offensive in Lebanon on September 30, three days after the Jewish nation targeted the Hezbollah headquarters in Dahiyeh, a stronghold of the Iran-backed group, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, and killed its chief Hassan Nasrallah. His cousin and likely successor, Hashem Safieddine, was also targeted in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, but his fate remains unclear.

In a rare Friday sermon, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that the Resistance – the name for its regional proxies – wouldn’t back down and Israel wouldn’t win over Hezbollah and Hamas. He also said that the Islamic Republic’s missile attack on Israel days ago was “legal and legitimate” as was Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel, adding it was the minimum punishment for Tel Aviv’s “crimes”.

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