The Israeli military launched what it called “preemptive” strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the Iran-backed militant group said it carried out its own attacks in response to the killing of a top commander.
The overnight strikes are some of the most serious yet between Israel and Hezbollah, who have been exchanging fire for months. The hostilities have raised the specter of a regional conflagration, prompting intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said about 100 of its fighter jets “struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels” across dozens of launch sites from Lebanon on Sunday. It followed these up with further attacks later in the day.
Israel said it carried out the strikes in self-defense after identifying that Hezbollah was “preparing to fire missiles and rockets toward Israeli territory.” Hezbollah called Israel’s description of its strike as preemptive “baseless.”
“We removed a wider threat, probably also a future threat in some areas,” IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sunday.
Soon after the Israeli raids, the IDF said approximately 200 rockets had been launched from Lebanon towards Israel early Sunday, with no reports of injuries so far. Hezbollah said the “first phase” of its strikes against Israel “ended with complete success,”claiming that it launched 320 rockets and a barrage of drones toward Israel.
Hezbollah said it carried out strikes towards Israel in response to the killing of top military commander Fu’ad Shukr last month in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a populous neighborhood that is also the Iran-backed group’s stronghold.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military intercepted “all of the drones that Hezbollah launched to a strategic target in the center of the country,” Netnyahu said, without clarify what the target was.
Netanyahu added that “what happened today is not the end,” and that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran “should know that this was another step on our way to change the situation in the north and safely return our residents to their homes.”
One Israeli soldier, 21-year-old David Moshe Ben Shitrit of the Israeli Navy, was killed in the fighting. He and two others were injured “either directly from an Iron Dome interceptor or from falling shrapnel from the interceptor that accidentally hit a Dvora-class fast patrol boat after intercepting a UAV,” an army official told CNN.
