HAIFA, Israel - Israel battered targets across Lebanon Sunday after a rocket fired by the radical Shiite group Hezbollah struck a railroad yard here and killed eight workers as other rockets rained deep into the Galilee region in northern Israel. The Israeli assault killed at least 28 people in south Lebanon, including eight Lebanese holding Canadian citizenship. The morning rocket attack effectively shut down Haifa, Israel's third largest city, and sent thousands of northern Israel residents fleeing for safety along southbound highways.

The Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz, declared a 48-hour state of emergency in the north and security officials warned residents as far south as Tel Aviv that they might be vulnerable to Hezbollah's new longer-range rockets, two of which hit the cities of Nazareth and Afula, which is 25 miles from the Lebanese border. It was the deepest strike yet inside Israel; no injuries were reported.

Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, hammered south Beirut and other targets in Lebanon while the Bush administration made preparations to evacuate some of the 25,000 U.S. citizens from a country now virtually cut off from the outside world.