Israeli airstrikes inside Lebanon on targets related to the Hezbollah militia hit deeper than any lately on Monday, focusing on an space near the Syrian border.
The Israeli navy mentioned that its fighter jets had struck Hezbollah air defenses within the Bekaa Valley, about 60 miles from the Israeli border. It mentioned that the strikes have been in response to a surface-to-air missile assault that downed an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed duty for that assault.
Not less than two Hezbollah fighters have been killed within the Israeli airstrikes and not less than six different folks have been wounded, in keeping with Bachir Khodor, mayor of the close by metropolis of Baalbek. Video from the scene supplied by Mr. Khodor, which couldn’t be independently verified, confirmed a constructing lowered to rubble and other people on stretchers being loaded into an ambulance.
The Israeli navy later confirmed that it had additionally killed a Hezbollah commander in a focused strike earlier within the day in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah introduced the fighter’s loss of life in an announcement, however didn’t present particulars on his rank or seniority.
In an announcement, Hezbollah mentioned that it had retaliated by firing a rocket barrage towards the Golan Heights, a plateau that Israel seized in 1967, and had geared toward an Israeli military headquarters. The Israeli navy didn’t instantly touch upon the assertion.
The Bekaa Valley, a fertile plain that runs alongside the Syrian border, has lengthy been a stronghold for Hezbollah, the politically highly effective Lebanese militia that has engaged in near-daily clashes with Israeli forces for the reason that Hamas-led assaults in Israel on Oct. 7. The preventing has displaced greater than 150,000 folks on each side of the Lebanese-Israeli border and left a whole bunch lifeless.
The airstrikes on Monday have been the primary time that the Israeli navy had hit the Bekaa Valley in the course of the present battle. Its strikes have just lately been transferring deeper inside Lebanon. Final week, the Israeli navy mentioned that it had struck what it referred to as Hezbollah weapons storage services close to the Lebanese coastal metropolis of Sidon, round 20 miles from the border with Israel.
Throughout a gathering with navy officers on Sunday, the Israeli protection minister, Yoav Gallant, mentioned that his nation was “planning to extend the firepower towards Hezbollah,” including that it will not pause operations alongside the border with Lebanon even when there have been a short lived halt to the preventing in Gaza.
“We are going to enhance the hearth within the north individually and can proceed till the total withdrawal of Hezbollah and the return of Israeli civilians to their houses,” he mentioned.
Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah lawmaker within the Lebanese Parliament, mentioned on Monday that the newest spherical of Israeli strikes would “not go and not using a response.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
