Hezbollah launches ‘revenge’ rocket blitz on Israel
Muhammad Neamah Naser, a senior commander, was killed in an Israeli drone strike on the Lebanese city of Tyre.
An Israeli soldier was killed after Hezbollah launched rockets and a swarm of drones across the Lebanon-Israel border in retaliation for the targeted assassination of one of its senior commanders in southern Lebanon.
Major Itay Galea, 38, a reservist from Ramat Gan who was deputy commander of a unit in northern Israel, was killed in the attack, which followed at least two strikes on Wednesday in response to what Hezbollah called “the assassination” of Muhammad Neamah Naser, a senior commander, in an Israeli drone strike on the city of Tyre. Israel claimed he was one of the highest-ranked Hezbollah personnel killed since the outbreak of war in October.
It marked the latest in a string of targeted killings of Hezbollah militia, including that of Taleb Abdullah, 55, from the southern Lebanon town of Aadachit, a leading commander of the same rank as Naser, who was assassinated last month.
In a statement, the Israeli military said Naser was in charge of “firing rockets and anti-tank missiles” towards civilians, communities and security forces, and had been active in Hezbollah since 2016, when he became head of the Aziz unit, one of the main fighting forces along the border.
Hezbollah said Naser took part in the 2006 Lebanon war, the militia’s last significant confrontation with Israel, which lasted 34 days.
It claimed to have fired 200 rockets and Iranian-made Falaq missiles at Israeli army bases near the border in retaliation for the killing.
The latest flare-up came as Western diplomats engaged in talks to prevent the outbreak of all-out war. Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, met French officials on Wednesday in Paris and discussed efforts to restore calm.
“France and the United States share the goal of resolving the current conflict across the Blue Line (the heavily militarised demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon) by diplomatic means, allowing Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return home with long-term assurances of safety and security,” Mr Hochstein said.
About 150,000 people have fled their homes on both sides of the border.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has effectively lost sovereignty” near the border with Lebanon because much of Israel’s northern border population have been driven from their homes.
Hezbollah joined the Israel-Hamas war in solidarity with Hamas the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. Both groups are allied with Iran.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israeli forces were hitting Hezbollah “very hard every day” and would be ready to take any action necessary, adding that the preference would be to reach a negotiated arrangement. Hezbollah said this week if a ceasefire were reached in Gaza it would stop firing into Israel.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets and “explosive drones” at army positions in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were mostly intercepted by Israeli air defences but sparked wildfires.
UN chief Antonio Guterres voiced concern on Wednesday “about the escalation of the exchange of fire”, spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, warning of the risk to the wider Middle East “if we were to find ourselves in a full-fledged conflict”.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said seven people were killed in Israeli strikes on Thursday, including five in a school in Gaza City, in the north of the besieged territory.
Fighting raged in the city’s Shujaiya neighbourhood and in Rafah, on the southern border with Egypt, where an Israeli evacuation order raised fears of a major new offensive.
Since the order was issued on Monday, tens of thousands of Palestinians fled eastern areas of Rafah and nearby Khan Yunis.
The UN said 1.9 million people were thought to have been displaced in Gaza, and around nine in every 10 people in the territory had been uprooted at least once since the war broke out.
It said up to 250,000 people were affected by Israel’s order to evacuate 117sqkm, equivalent to one-third of Gaza’s territory.
The Times
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