Three people were killed and some 40 others wounded when at least five Hezbollah fired rocket shit residential areas in Haifa on Sunday evening in the heaviest rocket strike on Israel's third largest city since the conflict began on July 12.

One of the rockets directly hit a three-storey building, where Israeli Arabs were inhabited, according to Haaretz daily report.

Five people were pulled from the rubble after a building collapsed in a strike on a residential neighborhood.

The head of the Magen David Adom (Israeli Red Cross) said all the people have been cleared from rocket-hit areas, and most casualties suffered lightly hurt.

Shortly after the siren, at least two explosions were heard in down town Haifa. Police and ambulances rushed to the scene, alarm whistles can be heard all around the port city.

"Israel is determined to bring this Hezbollah terror to an end," David Baker, an official in the Prime Minister's Office, told Haaretz after the barrage.

The strikes came several hours after 12 Israeli reservist soldiers were killed and 12 others wounded, four of them seriously, when a rocket fired by the Hezbollah militia hit a gathering spot of the Israeli army in Kfar Giladi, a community near the northern Israeli town of Kiyat Shemona.

Since the Isreali-Hezbollah conflict began on July 12, 58Israeli soldiers and 36 civilians have been killed.