The Lebanese Hezbollah movement has fired multiple barrages of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for an Israeli attack that killed one of its senior commanders.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has reportedly identified more than 200 projectiles that crossed the border on Wednesday. Some caused fires, but there were no casualties.
It came as a top Hezbollah official vowed that the Iran-backed group would increase the intensity, strength and quantity of its attacks.
He spoke at the funeral of Taleb Sami Abdullah, the field commander who was the target of an attack in southern Lebanon on Tuesday evening.
Since the day after the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began on October 7, there have been gun battles across the Israel-Lebanon border almost every day.
Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group. Both have been banned as terrorist organizations by Israel, Britain and other countries.
According to Lebanese authorities and the UN, more than 375 people have been killed in Lebanon, including at least 88 civilians, while the Israeli army says 18 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed in Israel.
The hostilities have also displaced tens of thousands of people from border communities in northern Israel and southern Lebanon.
Israeli media on Wednesday described Hezbollah’s rocket and rocket fire as “unprecedented” since the escalation of the conflict eight months ago.
Sirens sounded throughout the morning in northern Israel as more than 170 projectiles were detected crossing from Lebanon, according to the IDF.
Some projectiles were intercepted and others fell in several areas in northern Israel, causing fires to break out in some locations, the report said.
The IDF said its aircraft and artillery responded by attacking launch facilities in the southern Lebanese border areas of Yaroun and Hanine, as well as “terrorist infrastructure sites” in Yater.
They hit Yater again in the afternoon, as well as Taybeh, Markaba, Rachaya al-Foukhar and Tallouseh, after new launches towards northern Israel, it added.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli airstrikes destroyed a house in Yater, wounding one person. It also said warplanes and drones targeted Markaba and phosphorus shells were fired at Odaisseh.
By late afternoon, the total number of projectiles launched from Lebanon had reached 215, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
It also quoted Israel’s Fire and Rescue Authority as saying the fires caused by the rockets had endangered “strategic locations and facilities.”
Firefighters, volunteers, park rangers and soldiers were close to gaining control of the fires in the northern communities of Biriya, Kadita, Ein Zeitim and Tziv’on, it added.
Hezbollah said on Wednesday it had carried out at least 17 operations against Israel, including eight in response to the “assassination” of Taleb Abdullah and three other fighters.
Among the targets, according to the group, were Israeli military headquarters in Ein Zeitim and Ami’ad, a military air surveillance station in Meron and a “military factory” in Sasa.
The head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safieddine, told hundreds of mourners at Abdullah’s funeral in Beirut that Israel had “not learned from the experiences of the past.”
“Experience has shown that the more leaders are tortured, the more stable and deep the resistance becomes,” he added. “We will increase our activities in intensity, power, quantity and quality.”
The IDF said Abdullah and three other Hezbollah operatives were killed in an attack on a Hezbollah command and control center in the village of Jouaiyya on Tuesday evening.
It described Abdullah as “one of Hezbollah’s top commanders in southern Lebanon” and accused him of planning and carrying out “a large number of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.”
Security sources in Lebanon told the Reuters news agency that Abdullah was Hezbollah’s commander for the central region of the southern border strip and that he outranked Wissam Tawil, a commander of the elite Radwan Force who was killed in an Israeli attack in January.
Last week, after rocket fire sparked forest fires that destroyed 3,500 hectares of land in northern Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was prepared for “a very strong action in the north.”
“One way or another we will restore security,” he added.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, meanwhile, said his forces were “ready to launch an offensive” against Hezbollah.
