The Israeli military has warned civilians to avoid Hezbollah positions as it bombs southern Lebanon, with telephone warnings reportedly being sent across the country.

The Israeli army reported on Monday that its warplanes had carried out more than 100 attacks in southern and eastern Lebanon and threatened further action against the Iran-backed armed group that launched a rocket attack on northern Israel the previous day.

The intensification of fighting across the shared border, where minor skirmishes have broken out since Israel began its war on Gaza in October, follows pager and walkie-talkie explosions last week that killed dozens of people in Lebanon. The increasing hostilities are fuelling fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah or even a wider regional conflict.

In the early hours of Monday, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the army had carried out “extensive attacks” on Hezbollah positions after detecting attempts to fire rockets. The Israeli government recently said it would increase its focus on fighting with Hezbollah to allow the roughly 60,000 Israelis evacuated from border areas to return.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called on the public to remain calm as the military escalated its attack.

“We are intensifying our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal of returning the residents of the north safely to their homes,” Gallant said in a video released by his office on Monday. “These are days in which the Israeli public must show composure.”

“Psychological War”

Hagari warned residents of southern Lebanon to leave the areas where the armed group has positions. Civilians in the area received calls with the same message.

“We advise civilians from Lebanese villages located in or near buildings and areas used by Hezbollah for military purposes, such as storing weapons, to immediately leave the danger zone for their own safety,” Hagari told reporters.

When asked by a reporter whether the army was planning a ground offensive into the neighboring country, Hagari said: “We will do whatever is necessary to bring the residents of the north safely back to their homes.”

Lebanese media reported that people across the country, including in the capital Beirut in central Lebanon, had received telephone warnings from Israel urging them to evacuate.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported that “citizens in Beirut and numerous other areas are receiving telephone warnings via landlines from the Israeli enemy, urging them to evacuate quickly.”

Information Minister Ziad Makary’s office in Beirut said it had received a landline call with a “recorded message” urging people to evacuate the building to avoid an air strike.

NNA described the telephone warnings as “part of the psychological war that the enemy has started.”

An Al Jazeera correspondent reported from Beirut that people were “not only worried about what was happening in the south, but also about how close they are to open war between Hezbollah and Israel.”

Israel and Lebanon are technically at war and Lebanon bans communication with Israel.

An official at state-owned telecommunications operator Ogero told AFP that while Lebanon’s landline blocked all communications, Israel was “bypassing communications systems by using the international telephone code of a friendly country.”

“Battle of Reckoning”

An Al Jazeera reporter based near the village of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon counted at least 10 airstrikes at around 04:30 GMT, adding that Israel had hit several towns and villages in the south and in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon.

The footage showed columns of smoke. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station reported that Israeli warplanes had also attacked the Hermel region in northern Lebanon.

White House spokesman John Kirby said the US still believes there is room for a “diplomatic solution” but warned Israel that there are “better ways” to allow its residents to return to their homes in the north.

Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told mourners at the funeral of one of the group’s commanders killed in Beirut last week: “We have entered a new phase, the title of which is ‘The Battle of Reckoning with an Open End.'”

On Saturday, Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli air base at Ramat David, east of Haifa, in its most far-reaching attack on Israel’s interior.

Monday’s volley was one of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah since the war in the Gaza Strip began.

The two sides have been exchanging fire almost daily since October 8. The Iran-backed group said it would not stop until a ceasefire was reached in the Palestinian enclave.

But while these clashes were largely limited to the border areas and were mainly directed against military targets, they escalated dramatically this week.

Israel’s shift in focus was ushered in by a wave of unprecedented attacks. On Tuesday and Wednesday, thousands of pagers and other devices exploded in Beirut, targeting rank-and-file Hezbollah members and civilians, sending shockwaves across the country.

The explosions killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,000. Blame was widely placed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

On Friday, an Israeli strike killed a senior commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan unit and the deputy commander of the group’s forces, Ibrahim Aqil.

At least 45 people were killed in the attack in the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, including ten civilians.