BEIRUT/TEL AVIV/GAZA/   -   Lebanon’s state news agency NNA reported that Israeli aircraft carried out a total of 111 airstrikes in one hour on Saturday. It said the strikes occurred between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. local time.

“The Israeli enemy’s aircraft carried out a series of violent airstrikes on areas in Nabatieh, Iqlim al-Tuffah, and Western Bekaa,” according to NNA.

The Israel Defense Forces earlier said about 180 targets have been struck in southern Lebanon on Saturday. According to the IDF, approximately 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israel.

The “risk of escalation is real” between Israel and Hezbollah, amid a moment where the threat is “more acute,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Saturday.

“It stands to reason that Lebanese Hezbollah’s capabilities have taken a hit. How significant a hit, and how that translates to their ability to represent a threat to Israel, I think we still need some more time assessment to reach more engagements on,” Sullivan said ahead of Saturday’s Quad summit in Wilmington, Delaware. “The risk of escalation is real. It has been since October 7. There are moments where it is more acute than others. I think we are in one of those moments where it is more acute.”

Asked if the Israeli strike in southern Beirut that killed at least 37 people, including high-level commanders of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, was an escalation in his view, Sullivan pushed back, saying that “the United States is not going to score keep like that.”

“When I talk about escalation, I mean where, where does this take us? From the point of view of, are we going to end up in a wider war? We’re not there yet. I hope we do not get there,” Sullivan said.

Israel said it is “extensively striking” southern Lebanon after uncovering plans for a Hezbollah rocket attack on its territory.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said dozens of Israeli fighter jets are striking the launchers that the military claims were to be used in the attack.

“Overall, today we’ve struck approximately 400 Hezbollah launchers,” Hagari said during a news conference Saturday evening local time, adding that Israel is “striking methodologically, taking away more and more of Hezbollah’s launching capabilities (and) eliminating commanders and terrorists.”

Hagari said the IDF struck southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood on Friday, killing senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and 15 other commanders that were plotting to strike Israel.

“They met in order to plan terror attacks and infiltrations into Israel territory. But we knew where they were and got ahead of them with a precise and powerful operation,” Hagari said.

The Israeli military said it is carrying out a new wave of strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces did not provide details on the scale of the strikes or the exact location.

Lebanese state news agency NNA reported that more than 50 air raids happened in multiple parts of southern Lebanon in less than 40 minutes on Saturday night local time.

Planes targeted towns in the western part of the country, including Tir Harfa, Shihin, Al-Jibeen, Zibqin and Al-Duhayra, NNA reported.

Heavy drone activity was observed during strikes targeting the outskirts of Tuffahta and Al-Baysariya, according to the agency. Other strikes were reported around the Deir Amas valley in the Tyre district.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike Saturday on a school-turned-shelter in the Palestinian territory’s largest city killed 19 people, while Israel’s military said it targeted Hamas militants.

The dead included “13 children and six women”, one of whom was pregnant, said agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

There were “around 30 injured, including nine children (needing) limb amputations, as a result of an Israeli bombing on Al-Zaytoun School C” in Gaza City, he said.

Thousands of displaced people had sought shelter at the school, Bassal said.

Israel’s military said in a statement the air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City”.

It said the target was “embedded inside” the Al Falah School, which is adjacent to the Al-Zaytoun School buildings.

An AFP reporter at the scene confirmed that Al-Zaytoun School C had been hit.

Witnesses said that before the strike, orphans had gathered there because they were due to receive sponsorship from a local NGO for humanitarian assistance.

Israel’s military did not provide a death toll but said “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence”.

It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza.

A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni School in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings where many thousands of Gazans have sought shelter -- a charge denied by the Palestinian militant group.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the ongoing war, which was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.

At least 41,391 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as reliable.