Israel claimed to have destroyed 100 Hezbollah missile launchers in a series of intensive airstrikes on several towns in southern Lebanon.

This comes amid a mutual escalation with Hezbollah following a series of large-scale bombings of wireless communication devices in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, which left 37 dead and thousands injured.

Anadolu Agency correspondent reported that Israeli warplanes launched two large waves of raids on Thursday evening on areas in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese National News Agency (official) said that the number of air strikes launched by the Israeli Air Force on the south of the country since 9:00 pm on Thursday (18:00 GMT) has exceeded 52.

She explained that these raids targeted forested areas (densely wooded) in the town of Mahmoudiya, the outskirts of the town of Al-Aishiya, the heights of Al-Rayhan, and the vicinity of the Burghaz River, without discussing the toll of these raids and whether or not they resulted in casualties.

For its part, the Israeli army claimed, in a statement, that its fighters "attacked, since Thursday afternoon, about 100 missile launch pads and additional military infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah, which included about 100 launch nozzles that were ready for immediate launch."

He added that this came under the "direction of the Military Intelligence Division and the Northern Region Command", with the aim of reducing Hezbollah's capabilities and destroying its infrastructure, while the party has not responded to the army's statement so far.

The Israeli army had previously announced, in a statement earlier on Thursday evening, that its forces had targeted "30 missile platforms, including about 150 launch nozzles, that were ready to carry out missile operations towards Israel in the immediate future."

The Israeli army usually claims that its attacks in Lebanon target Hezbollah military targets or cadres, but the Lebanese side says that many of them target innocent civilians.

This comes as Hezbollah announced, on Thursday, that it had launched 17 attacks on soldiers, sites, military vehicles and settlements in northern Israel.

This is the largest number of attacks launched by the party against Israel in 98 days, and the fourth largest daily rate of attacks since the exchange of fire between the two sides began about a year ago.

Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have increased over the past two days, after 25 people were killed and 450 others were injured in a wave of bombings that hit ICOM radio communications equipment across Lebanon on Wednesday.

These explosions came the day after similar explosions that hit electronic pagers, killing 12 people, including two children, and injuring about 2,800 others, 300 of whom were in critical condition.

Without explaining how, the Lebanese government and Hezbollah held Israel responsible for the "Bager" bombings, and the party threatened it with "severe punishment."

Israel maintains an official silence, and the office of its Prime Minister Netanyahu disavowed, in a statement, a post by his adviser Topaz Luke, on the "X" platform, in which he hinted at Tel Aviv's responsibility for Tuesday's bombings before deleting it.

Meanwhile, American media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, and Axios, reported that Israel placed small explosive charges inside imported pager communication devices before they arrived in Lebanon, and then detonated them remotely.

Many countries condemned the bombing of communication devices and expressed their solidarity with Lebanon, while international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, confirmed that such bombings endanger the lives of civilians and violate the laws of war.

Since October 8, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, have been exchanging daily shelling with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line,” which has resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries, most of them on the Lebanese side.

These factions demand an end to the war waged by Israel with American support on the Gaza Strip since October 7, which has left more than 136,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and deadly famine.