The pace of rocket attacks on northern Israel from southern Lebanon is increasing as troops with the Israeli Defense Forces attempt to fend off incursions by Hezbollah terrorists into the now largely evacuated region. A fresh barrage on Thursday is being described as the largest such attack since the start of the war October 7.

Air raid sirens wailed in both northern and southern Israel throughout the day Thursday and IDF officials say they responded to the attacks from southern Lebanon with artillery strikes. As many as 30 rockets rained down on the area around Western Gallilee, attacks that both Hamas and Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, took credit for. At least two people were reported injured.

At the same time, rockets from Gaza were landing in the southern city of Sderot and other communities along the strip’s eastern border. No injuries were reported in the southern communities, but at least one civilian home was hit by a rocket.

The increasing intensity of attacks on Israel from the north are raising the prospect of a wider war that would force Israel to defend itself on two fronts when it begins a long-expected ground incursion to eliminate Hamas from the Gaza strip. Reporters on the scene in the north said Israeli military forces are now on high-alert and helicopter gunships are in the air almost constantly.

The Israeli military has ordered communities within three miles of the border evacuated, so most of the communities are devoid of potential civilian targets. Some 27,000 civilians have left the area, according to Israel’s National Emergency Management Authority, as Hezbollah showered the region with dozens of rockets and anti-tank missiles and reportedly sent gunmen, aided by unmanned drones, across the border in an effort to engage Israeli soldiers.

So far, at least five Israeli soldiers, 13 Hezbollah fighters and five Palestinian terrorists have been killed in the increasingly frequent exchanges of gunfire on the border. Despite warnings from the United States and Israel not to get involved in the conflict, Hezbollah has said it is “fully prepared” to join the Hamas terrorists in their fight against Israel.

Iranian officials have warned of the prospects of a wider war should Israel continue its war against Hamas in Gaza. In a report on Iranian state television Thursday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that if the war continued “nobody could stop the forces of the resistance,” referring to a network of terrorists throughout the Middle East.