BEIRUT (AP) — Israel sent troops into southern Lebanon on Tuesday and warned residents of more than 80 villages to evacuate as the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group said it was ready for an “open war” with Israel in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
The development came after Hezbollah fired rockets and launched drones early Monday toward northern Israel. Israel retaliated with a wave of airstrikes that killed 40 people in Lebanon, including a Palestinian militant and a Hezbollah intelligence official in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
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Firefighters inspect the rubble as smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
FILE - Employees work in the newsroom of Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV station in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A firefighter extinguishes a burned shop at a building that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
That death toll is a revised figure from an earlier one reported by the Health Ministry, which said Monday that 52 people died in the strikes. Lebanese Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine told reporters on Tuesday that 40 died.
Lebanon also said 246 people were wounded and tens of thousands displaced.
Hezbollah said on Tuesday morning it fired two salvos of rockets toward northern Israel while Israeli airstrikes overnight damaged a building housing Hezbollah’s TV and radio stations. Beirut’s southern suburbs saw a series of strikes early on Tuesday afternoon that came without warning, and the Israeli military later said it targeted Hezbollah officials.
The Israeli military’s Arabic spokesman, Avichay Adraee, warned residents of more than 80 villages and towns in southern Lebanon to leave, adding that people should not return to these areas until further notice.
A senior Hezbollah official said that after more than a year of abiding by a ceasefire as Israel’s strikes continued on Lebanon, the group’s patience has ended, leaving it with no option but to fight Israel. “The Zionist enemy wanted an open war, which it has not stopped since the ceasefire agreement,” Mohamoud Komati said.
“So let it be an open war,” added the Hezbollah official.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, France and Egypt on Tuesday that Hezbollah has been firing rockets from areas north of the Litani River.
The Lebanese government said in January that Hezbollah weapons and military facilities have been removed from the area south of the river and along the border with Israel, and that Lebanese troops are in full control of the area between the river and the border.
The Israeli military said Tuesday it has sent additional troops into southern Lebanon and took new positions on several strategic points close to the border. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the Lebanese army was evacuating some of its positions along the border.
Adraee, the Israeli spokesman, posted on X that the troops’ movements inside Lebanon is part of efforts to bolster Israel's forward defense system and create an addition layer of security.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the Lebanese army was evacuating some of its border positions.
A Lebanese military official confirmed to The Associated Press that Israeli troops had moved into several areas in southern Lebanon on Tuesday and that the Lebanese army was “repositioning” in the area. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military movements.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, later Tuesday said its peacekeepers saw Israeli troops making forays across the border and then returning to Israel. It wasn’t immediately clear how many soldiers remained inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, that conflict escalated into a full-scale war in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from most of southern Lebanon after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting in November 2024 but continued to occupy five points on the Lebanese side of the border. Israel also continued with near-daily strikes, primarily in southern Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah has been trying to rebuild its forces in the area.
Lebanon's Health Ministry also said Tuesday that 397 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect and before Hezbollah launched its latest attacks.
Firefighters inspect the rubble as smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
FILE - Employees work in the newsroom of Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV station in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A firefighter extinguishes a burned shop at a building that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The midterm elections officially begin Tuesday with primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. As war with Iran breaks out, Democrats and Republicans are figuring out who they want to lead their party into November’s general election, when control of Congress and statehouses around the country will be up for grabs.
The most hotly contested races of the day are in Texas, with fierce competition on both sides of the aisle for U.S. Senate nominations. It’s possible that the Republican campaign will continue into a runoff.
Here's the latest:
In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.
In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.
Competitive races in which votes are actively being tabulated — for example, in states that count a large number of votes after election night — might be considered “too early to call.” A race may be “too close to call” if a race is so close that there’s no clear winner even once all ballots except for provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted.
The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.
The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.
The AP hires vote count reporters who work with local election officials to collect results directly from counties or precincts where votes are first counted. These reporters submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as the results are available. If any of the results are available from state or county websites, the AP will gather the results from there, too.
In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots throughout the night. The AP is continually updating its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make as many as 21,000 vote updates per hour.
The 2026 midterm season begins in earnest Tuesday with two of the nation’s most consequential Senate primaries playing out in Texas, a political behemoth Democrats have been fighting to flip for decades.
Is this the year? Republican leaders in Washington openly fret that a victory by conservative firebrand Ken Paxton over four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would give Democrats a rare shot of winning the seat come November. The contest has already cost Republicans tens of millions of dollars, and there will be much more spent ahead of a May 26 runoff if no one gets 50% in the three-way primary that also includes Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Democrats, meanwhile, are picking between two rising stars with conflicting styles. There’s U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who made a name for herself through confrontation, and state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher who’s working toward a divinity degree.
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The United States doesn’t have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves don’t even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.
The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and the official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in January that the state should seize control of elections in Harris County, which includes Houston and is a key battleground.
His comments continued years of Republican criticism over how elections are run in the county of more than 5 million, where Hispanic and Black residents make up a majority. Democrats have controlled the county since 2018.
Abbott signed laws that eliminated Harris County’s independent elections administrator and banned drive-thru voting in Houston. And last year he waited nine months to hold a special election to fill a U.S. House seat representing Houston, saying the county needed extra time to prepare for a vote without any problems.
Democrats accused Abbott of delaying that election to help Republicans maintain their razor-thin margin in the House.
Republican incumbents, including U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, are heavy favorites to win their primaries in Arkansas.
Cotton, who is seeking his third term in office, will face Jeb Little, an Arkansas State Police trooper, and Micah Ashby, a minister from Bradford.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as President Donald Trump’s press secretary during Trump’s first term, is seeking her second term in office. She did not draw a Republican opponent.
Arkansas hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2010, and Sanders and Cotton will be heavy favorites to win reelection in November.
Polls have now opened for voters in El Paso and Hudspeth counties, an area of about 1 million people on the western tip of Texas in the Mountain Time Zone.
Polls in Arkansas are open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and voters are required to show photo identification before voting.
About 2,600 sites nationwide opened at 6:30 a.m. ET and will close at 7:30 p.m. ET. Some ballots have already been cast by mail or during an early in-person voting period that ended Saturday.
There’s an open race for a seat in the U.S. Senate because Republican Sen. Thom Tillis decided not to seek reelection after clashing with Trump. Former Gov. Roy Cooper is seeking the Democratic nomination, while former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley is running to represent his party.
Voters are also picking nominees for U.S. House seats, including the Republican choice to challenge Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the 1st District. That district became more Republican as state legislators redrew it during Trump’s redistricting effort to help his party maintain control of the House.
A man wears an "I voted" sticker outside a polling location Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Spring, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
A voter makes his way into a polling location, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Spring, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
FILE - An election judge arranges "I Vote, I Count" stickers on a table in the Marion County Clerks office as voters cast early ballots in Indianapolis, Oct. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
