Hezbollah unleashed a wave of missile attacks against Israel over the weekend, promising a “battle without limits” as fighting along the Jewish state’s northern border intensified.

“We have entered a new phase, the title of which is the open-ended battle of reckoning,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said on Sunday after the terror group launched more than 150 cruise missiles and drones at towns deep inside Israel. It was some of the most intense fighting yet in the nearly year-long conflict, all but cementing a full-blown war between Israel and Lebanon.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country will take “whatever action is necessary” to weaken Hezbollah and alluded to last week’s mass pager and radio attacks as a “series of blows” the terror group did not expect. Israel bombed nearly 300 Hezbollah sites on Saturday in a bid to thwart the terror group’s upcoming attacks.

“If Hezbollah didn’t understand the message, I promise you it will understand the message,” Netanyahu said, adding that he intends to return more than 50,000 displaced Israelis to their homes in northern Israel.

Both sides show no intention of backing down from a fight, with Hezbollah seeking to reassert its authority after a stunning Israeli intelligence operation saw the militant group’s pagers and radios simultaneously explode, wounding thousands. Israeli military officials promised their “strikes will intensify” in the coming days and said they are already making preparations for the “next steps” in the war.

Since the pager and radio attacks, Israel and Hezbollah have significantly intensified their fighting, with missiles and bombs falling almost constantly on both sides of the border.

Hezbollah’s rockets reached deeper into Israel than ever before, setting off air raid sirens across the north and landing a direct hit on a town near Haifa, a major port city. The strikes were a clear warning to Israel that Hezbollah’s arsenal of advanced Iranian arms are capable of hitting its most important cities and straining the Jewish state’s critical missile defense systems. At the same time, Israeli forces intercepted drones and missiles fired from Iraq and headed toward southern Israel.

White House spokesman John Kirby touted the Biden-Harris administration’s “quite assertive diplomacy” and expressed concern with “the escalating tensions in the region.”

“We don’t believe, continue to not believe, that kinetic action, military action, by either side is really in either side’s best interest,” Kirby said during a Sunday TV appearance.

Away from Israel’s northern border, in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas continues to wage war on Israel’s south, rumors circulated that the terror group’s top official, Yahya Sinwar, is dead.

Israel is said to be investigating the possibility that Sinwar was killed or wounded during recent strikes. The terror leader has not been in contact with anyone outside of Hamas for an “extended period,” leading to speculation he may have been hit by an Israeli strike. Israeli security forces, however, have not been able to verify these reports.

Israel also raided the Al Jazeera news outlet’s Ramallah headquarter in the West Bank this weekend, forcing it to close down amid concerns the broadcaster is complicit in terrorism operations. The Qatar-funded outlet has published a steady stream of anti-Israel propaganda since the Oct. 7 terror strikes and is believed to work closely with Hamas forces throughout the region.