Massive barrage launched in response to killing of armed group’s senior commander as fears of full-blown conflict reverberate.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it launched greater than 200 rockets and drones focusing on Israeli army positions in response to a strike that killed a senior commander of the armed group.
A Hezbollah supply confirmed Thursday’s barrage to Al Jazeera – the second main assault in two days – launched in retaliation for the killing of Muhammad Nimah Nasser in southern Lebanon a day earlier.
Nasser, also referred to as “Hajj Abu Nimah”, was the third high-ranking official killed in virtually 9 months of cross-border fighting that erupted after Israel launched its conflict on Gaza. His dying prompted Hezbollah to launch greater than 100 rockets into Israel on Wednesday.
The assault on Thursday was one of many largest to date alongside the Lebanon-Israel border as tensions skyrocket with the group sending exploding drones at a number of army bases in northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The Israeli army mentioned its forces had been “striking launch posts in southern Lebanon” after “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory”, most of which had been intercepted.
It mentioned “fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel” following the assaults.
Israeli media reported a car with Israeli troops inside was hit by a projectile. There had been reportedly two direct strikes on two buildings, one in Acre and one other north of town. Ambulance service Magen David Adom mentioned two ladies had been taken to hospital in northern Israel with mild accidents.
Seventeen alerts had been sounded over 90 minutes in several elements of the northern area, from Nahariya within the west to Golan within the east, based on the army.
Wider conflict fears develop
The uptick in combating and charged rhetoric between Hezbollah and Israeli officers has despatched United States, European, and Arab mediators scrambling to forestall a wider regional conflagration.
Hezbollah says it’s placing Israel in solidarity with Palestinian armed group Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing no less than 1,139 individuals and taking about 250 others captive.
In response, Israel launched a no-limits assault on Gaza that has killed greater than 38,000 individuals – principally kids and ladies – forcibly displaced about two million others a number of instances, and laid waste to the long-besieged coastal enclave.
Now, as tensions with Hezbollah spike, Israeli officers say they could go to conflict in Lebanon if efforts for a diplomatic resolution fail.
Estimates recommend border clashes have to date killed no less than 496 individuals in Lebanon, principally fighters but in addition 95 civilians. Israeli authorities say no less than 15 troopers and 11 civilians have died.
Rami Khouri, a political analyst from the American University of Beirut, mentioned whereas Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to thump the drums of conflict with Hezbollah, its army is unprepared for a second entrance.
“Netanyahu, especially, keeps saying we are going to attack Lebanon. We are going to destroy Hezbollah. But they don’t have the capacity to do that while they are still fighting a war in Gaza,” Khouri advised Al Jazeera.
He recommended a Gaza ceasefire is the absolute best state of affairs for Israel. “Hezbollah has said many times: ‘We will stop attacking Israel if Israel stops attacking Gaza.’”
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, mentioned on Wednesday he’s “very worried about the escalation of the exchange of fire” between Hezbollah and Israel.
He warned of the potential dangers to the area as an entire if it had been to seek out itself in a “full-fledged conflict”.