ISRAEL broke its ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah and renewed its bombing campaign of southern Lebanon today, as its troops prepared to advance on Gaza City, amidst a communication blackout.

Israeli air force spokesman Avichay Adraee announced the strikes on social media hours before the bombs began to fall. He claimed Israel was targeting the Iran-backed paramilitary group Hezbollah.  

“Urgent warning to the residents of southern Lebanon,” Mr Adraee posted on social media today.

“The [Israeli army] will attack, in the near future, military infrastructure belonging to the terrorist Hezbollah throughout southern Lebanon in order to confront its prohibited attempts to rebuild its activities in the area,” he wrote.

Hezbollah and Israel began firing at each other's forces soon after the latter began its genocidal onslaught of Gaza in October 2023 — ostensibly to topple Hamas and free the hostages the Islamists had taken from Israel on the 10th.

Israel killed more than 3,000 people and displaced nearly a million more in its bombing campaign in Lebanon. It signed a ceasefire, backed by the US and France, with Hezbollah in November 2024, but continued to bomb the south periodically since.

“Lebanon calls on the international community, especially the countries sponsoring the agreement to cease hostilities, to exert maximum pressure on Israel to immediately stop its aggressions,” Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a statement today.

The attack comes a year and a day since Israel’s infamous pager attack on the country. At least 40 people, including children, were killed and hundreds injured when pagers, radios and other electronic devices that Israel had managed to rig with explosives exploded across the country on September 17 2024.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops and tanks prepared to launch an assault on Gaza City. Updates from the Gaza Strip were few and far between today after Israel cut off all of its communication lines.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced today that about 740,000 people remain in north Gaza, where the Israelis are preparing to invade.

Medical sources in Gaza told Al Jazeera today that at least 48 people had been killed since dawn by Israeli air strikes.