Hezbollah launches 150 missiles at Israel; pound “reckoning”

Beirut. Hezbollah launched more than 100 rockets into northern Israel yesterday, in what one of its senior leaders called an open battle of reckoning. Some of the rockets landed near the city of Haifa; one hit a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, injuring at least three people and setting buildings and cars on fire.

The attack came after Israeli operations in Lebanon that have left dozens dead, including a veteran Hezbollah commander, and an unprecedented attack targeting the group’s communications devices. Air raid sirens in northern Israel sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to shelters.

During the night and into the early hours of the morning, some 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones were fired towards Israeli territory.the army said in a statement, adding that the projectiles were directed towards civilian areaspointing to a possible escalation after previous attacks mainly targeted military targets.

The Israeli authorities ordered the suspension of classes in the north of the country and the transfer of hospitals to safe areas underground.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will take whatever action is necessary to restore security and allow people to return to their homes. No country can accept free shipping of rockets to their cities. We can’t accept it eitherhe stated.

If Hezbollah hasn’t gotten the message, I promise they will. We are determined to return our residents to their homes in the north of the countryhe declared.

Lebanon’s Health Minister reported that three people were killed and four wounded in Israeli attacks, without specifying whether they were civilians or combatants.

Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s replacement leader, said his group is now in a open battle of reckoning with Israel. “We recognize that we are hurt. We are humans. But, just as we are hurt… you will be too,” said Kassem at the funeral of Commander Ibrahim Aqil. He added that the rockets launched yesterday were just the beginning and vowed to destroy the Israeli economy.

On Friday, an Israeli attack in Beirut killed Aqil, 61, and dozens of people, including women and children, and a few days earlier a sophisticated attack on Hezbollah caused thousands of pagers and portable radios to explode.

Aqil had been on the United States’ most wanted list for years, due to his alleged involvement in the bombing of Washington’s embassy in Beirut and the capture of American and German hostages in Lebanon during the civil war of the decade. from 1980.

A few days before the attack in Beirut, a sophisticated operation against Hezbollah caused the explosion of thousands of beepers and walkie-talkies of its militants in Lebanon and Syria, killing more than 40 people and leaving nearly 3,000 injured. This action was attributed to Israel, both by the Shiite group and by official US sources cited by various media.

Israel did not speak out immediately, until yesterday, when President Isaac Herzog rejected flat any link between his country and what happened, adding that Hezbollah has many enemies.

The pro-Iranian armed groups that make up Islamic resistance in Iraq claimed yesterday drone attacks against Israel, which for its part said it intercepted several suspicious flying objects coming from Iraq. Overnight, several suspicious flying objects approached Israel from Iraq, the Israeli army reported, and indicated that they were intercepted and that no injuries were reported.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire since the outbreak of war in Gaza almost a year ago, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and their Iranian-backed ally Hamas. The low-intensity fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel and hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced hundreds of thousands on both sides of the border.

Until recently, either side was not believed to be seeking open war, and Hezbollah had refrained from attacking Tel Aviv or any major civilian infrastructure. However, in recent weeks Israel has shifted its attention from Gaza to Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it will only stop its attacks if the war in Gaza ends, but a ceasefire there looks increasingly elusive.

The war began with the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, in which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages. They still hold 100 captives, of whom a third are believed to have died.

More than 41,000 Palestinians have died, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, operated by Hamas. He does not specify how many were combatants, but he assures that women and children make up more than half of the fallen.

© The Independent

Translation: Jorge Anaya

Israel unleashed its most widespread wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah, killing at least 100 people, as cross-border attacks between the two sides continue to rise. Via Graphic News