Israel launched its biggest strike in 10 months against Hezbollah, a Lebanese proxy group, early Sunday, an Israeli security source told VOA, using precise intelligence to prevent the launch of thousands of rockets and drones into Israeli territory.
The Israeli military said about 100 fighter jets attacked more than 40 Hezbollah launch bases in southern Lebanon equipped with thousands of missiles and drones shortly before 5 a.m. local time. Hezbollah is a group designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the main regional proxy force of Iran’s Islamist rulers.
At around 5:30 a.m., Hezbollah began firing more than 150 rockets and drones at northern Israel, according to the Israeli military. The attacks caused material damage but no fatalities.
In a series of social media statements, Hezbollah said it fired more than 300 rockets and drones at Israel at dawn, part of its first retaliation for Israel’s July 30 killing of top military commander Fouad Shukur in southern Beirut.
“Our military operation for today is complete and accomplished,” Hezbollah said, stressing that it had targeted Israeli military sites.
Israeli reserve Brigadier General Jacob Nagel, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told VOA in a text message that Israel’s “precise intelligence work worked very well” in detecting Hezbollah’s plans to penetrate deep into Israel with the aim of damaging both military and civilian facilities and harming civilians.
The Israeli military said most of the rockets and drones Hezbollah prepared for Sunday morning’s attack were aimed at northern Israel, but some were also aimed at the densely populated center of the country. Hezbollah denied that its planned attack was largely thwarted by an Israeli preemptive strike.
On October 8, Hezbollah began small, almost daily attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian terror group Hamas, another Iranian proxy. Hamas had begun its war against Israel the day before by invading the south of the country from Gaza.
In a phone conversation with VOA, Major Sarit Zehavi said Hezbollah’s attacks early Sunday were “completely different” from those of the past 10 months because they simultaneously attacked a wide swath of northern Israeli towns and villages, including those that had not been evacuated. Tens of thousands of Israelis had already evacuated communities within several kilometers of the Lebanese border at the start of the conflict.
Zehavi also denied Hezbollah’s claim that its attacks were aimed exclusively at Israeli military sites.
“When you fire these types of missiles, they are inaccurate and hit everything,” she said.
Nagel, whom Netanyahu appointed earlier this month to head a commission to evaluate Israel’s security budget, said Israel’s goal in the preemptive strike against Hezbollah was not to trigger a full-scale war.
“But we will do what is necessary to bring our citizens from the north home safely,” said Nagel, who also works as a senior fellow for the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
