Jerusalem: Israel’s military said in a statement early on Monday it launched multiple air and artillery strikes overnight on what it said were Hezbollah military targets in Lebanon.
The strikes came after the militant group said on Sunday it had launched its “largest” air operation, sending explosive drones at a mountaintop Israeli military intelligence base in the annexed Golan Heights.
The latest incident among escalating cross-border exchanges of fire has triggered global alarm. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Hamas ally, has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian militant group’s Oct 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah declared in a statement “the largest operation” carried out by its aerial forces, claiming its fighters sent to hit the Mount Hermon reconnaissance center “multiple, successive squadrons of drones.”
The army explained the incident as an event where an explosive drone “fell in an open area in the Mount Hermon area,” adding that there were “no injuries.”Attacks, as well as rhetoric, have risen in recent weeks amid fears of an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah going to war again in 2006.
Their attack, said the Lebanese movement, was part of its “response” to the killing of an operative in a strike Saturday deep into east Lebanon around 100 kilometers from the border. The Mount Hermon assault focused on intelligence systems, “destroying them and starting a huge fire,” Hezbollah said.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops on Mount Hermon earlier on Sunday, his office said. In two other statements, the military said its air defenses “successfully intercepted” several “aerial targets” that crossed from Lebanon after sirens sounded in the Golan Heights area.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 before annexing it in a move not widely recognized by the international community. Saturday’s strike targeted “a key operative in Hezbollah’s Aerial Defense Unit,” the military has said.
All Sunday, Hezbollah said it was carrying out four more attacks on the Israeli military across the border with barrages of guided missiles and rockets. Israeli authorities reported four wounded.
Gallant, in a video from Mount Hermon, said that “even if there is a ceasefire” in Gaza, “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah.
The violence across their volatile border has killed at least 497 people in Lebanon, primarily fighters but including 95 civilians, an AFP tally shows. According to the Israeli authorities, at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians are known to have died. Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from the border areas in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
