Netanyahu vows Iran will pay ‘a heavy price’ after drone strike near his home

Israeli strikes pummelled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday as Hezbollah fired salvos of rockets at northern Israel, with one drone directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home.

Netanyahu’s spokesman said the prime minister was not in the vicinity of his holiday home in Caesarea and there were no casualties.

Israeli security forces secure a road near where Israel’s government says a drone was launched toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house.Credit: AP

Later, Israeli media published a video of Netanyahu walking in a park and stating: “Nothing will deter us, we will keep going until victory,” he said in the video filmed by one of his aides.

“The proxies of Iran who today tried to assassinate me and my wife made a bitter mistake,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” he added.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group did not claim responsibility for the drone attack but said it carried out several rocket attacks on northern and central Israel.

The volleys from Hezbollah came as health officials in Gaza, where Israel has been battling Palestinian militant group Hamas for more than a year, said Israeli strikes had killed more than 30 people across the territory.

Pledges from Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting in Gaza and Lebanon have dashed hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar might hasten an end to more than a year of escalating war in the Middle East.

Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the Gaza war, was killed by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday.

Israel also tightened a siege around hospitals in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where residents and medical officials said Israeli forces were bombing houses and preventing medical and food supplies from entering.

Israel has been pounding Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, in what it says is an effort to stop Hamas fighters regrouping.

On Saturday afternoon, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, leaving thick plumes of smoke wafting over the city horizon throughout the evening.

It issued evacuation orders for four separate neighbourhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 metres away, but carried out strikes in other parts as well, Reuters witnesses said.

In northern Israel, some of the rockets were intercepted but one hit a residential building, police said.

One person was killed and at least nine people were injured in different locations, the Israeli ambulance service said. Air raid sirens sent people running to shelters.

Also on Saturday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza showing a picture of the dead Hamas chief with the message that “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza”, echoing language used by Netanyahu.

“Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace,” the leaflet, written in Arabic, read, according to residents of the southern city of Khan Younis and images circulating online.

The leaflet’s wording was from a statement by Netanyahu on Thursday after Sinwar was killed by Israeli soldiers operating in Rafah, in the south near the Egyptian border, on Wednesday.

The October 7 attack Sinwar planned on Israeli communities a year ago killed around 1,200 people, with another 253 dragged back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent war has devastated Gaza, killing more than 42,500 Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.

AP and Reuters

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