IDF hits Hezbollah installations in Beirut as terrorists fire more than 170 rockets
Three commanders of the terror group killed in separate strike; Lebanon army says 3 troops killed in strike on vehicle; rocket attacks cause damage but no injuries in Israel
Israeli fighter jets struck a command center belonging to Hezbollah’s intelligence division and an underground weapons manufacturing site in Beirut on Sunday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Before the strike, the IDF issued evacuation warnings to civilians in the area.
Separate strikes in southern Lebanon targeted and killed three prominent Hezbollah operatives.
The IDF named them as al-Hajj Abbas Salameh, a senior member of Hezbollah’s Southern Front; Reda Abbas Ouda, a communications specialist; and Ahmed Ali Hussain, responsible for weapons manufacturing.
The Lebanese army said three soldiers were killed Sunday in an Israeli strike that “targeted” their vehicle in the country’s south. It was not immediately clear if that strike was linked to the ones claimed by Israel.
The troops were killed on a road connecting the border village of Ain Ebel to the nearby town of Hanin, the army said. The latest deaths bring the number of troop casualties to eight, since all-out war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah last month.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched several volleys of rockets, including a total of some 170 rockets toward Israel, triggering sirens in the Western and Upper Galilee regions as well as Haifa and its environs, the IDF said.
Some rockets were shot down, while others impacted, sparking fires, the military said. Firefighters were deployed to extinguish the blazes.
The Israel Fire and Rescue Service reported that fragments from an interceptor missile fell on a residential building in the western part of Haifa, causing some damage to the two-story property but no injuries.
Hezbollah also said it fired “a big rocket salvo” at an Israeli army base east of Safed, claiming the attack was “in defense of Lebanon” and “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks on villages and homes.”
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the attacks.
In a visit to northern Israel on Sunday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops of the IDF’s 98th Division that Hezbollah operatives captured and interrogated by Israel were “terrified,” and that the Iran-backed terror group was “collapsing.”
“The prisoners tell us what’s happening, that they’re terrified because they know that they don’t have what it takes to deal with what’s happening. Not in terms of strength, combat ability, precision or determination,” he said. “This whole great formation they call Hezbollah is collapsing.”
The IDF last week published footage of an alleged member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces being interrogated about the terror group’s plans in southern Lebanon and the current state of its operations.
“We are moving from a situation of defeating the enemy village by village, to destruction — blowing up the tunnels and the ammunition depots, and dismantling Hezbollah,” Gallant told troops.
“The result is that in every place that Hezbollah was waiting and preparing to raid [Israeli] border town, there are IDF soldiers.”
He reiterated that Israel’s goal was to “completely clean this area so that residents can return to their homes and their lives.”
Tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel have been displaced from their homes for the last year, after Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks in the wake of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror onslaught, saying it was doing so in support of the Gaza-based terror group.
After suffering nearly a year of cross-border attacks, Israel launched a major offensive against Hezbollah in September with catastrophic consequences for the group, decimating its leadership and crippling much of its capabilities.
This month, it launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon to dismantle terror infrastructure that threatened communities near the border.
The attacks on northern Israel over the last year have resulted in the deaths of 29 civilians. In addition, 43 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.
Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 516 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 94 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began a new offensive against Hezbollah in September, but the IDF estimates that more than 1,500 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict.
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