Some 85 rockets were launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon at the Haifa area in northern Israel on Sunday morning, following overnight launches at the Jezreel Valley, the terror group’s deepest rocket fire into Israel since the beginning of the war in October.
A teenager was killed when he crashed his vehicle as sirens sounded in the early hours of the morning, and at least three people were injured as a result of the rocket fire.
The military said that some of the rockets fired toward Haifa were intercepted, while others impacted in Kiryat Bialik, a suburb of the northern coastal city, injuring three people.
The victims were a man in his 70s who was in moderate condition, and another man in his 70s and a 16-year-old girl who were lightly hurt. All three were taken to Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center for treatment.
One rocket hit a home in Moreshet in the Lower Galilee, causing significant damage but no injuries.
In a statement, Hezbollah claimed that the rocket fire targeted a Rafael defense firm facility in the Haifa area.
The Iran-backed terror group said the rockets were in response to the pager and walkie-talkie blasts in Lebanon last week, which killed more than 30 members of the terror group and wounded thousands of others. The attack was attributed to Israel, which has not commented.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, Hezbollah fired 24 rockets at the Jezreel Valley — the deepest rocket fire into northern Israel since October. According to the Israel Defense Forces, all of the rockets were intercepted by air defenses.
However, a 17-year-old was killed in a traffic accident near Ramat Yishai when the sirens sounded during one of the early morning barrages.
Police said that four other people in the vehicle were injured, including a seriously hurt 20-year-old.
Police were reported to believe the driver panicked when the sirens began, and lost control of the vehicle.
Large pieces of shrapnel fell in the Jezreel Valley following the interceptions, causing damage to a barn in one area and slightly wounding a man in another.
Hezbollah took responsibility for the barrage, claiming to have targeted the Israeli Air Force’s Ramat David Airbase, located some 50 kilometers from the Lebanon border, with dozens of rockets.
According to the Hezbollah-affiliated al-Mayadeen network, the rockets were fired from an underground “Imad” missile base.
The expanded range of the rocket attacks put some two million Israelis — a fifth of the population — in range of the strikes. “Hundreds of thousands of people had to take refuge in bomb shelters” across northern Israel, military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told AFP after the strikes overnight and early in the morning.
In the wake of the rocket fire, the IDF said it was carrying out a new wave of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon while aerial defenses remained in a high state of alert.
“IDF strikes will continue and increase against the terrorist organization Hezbollah,” the military said.
On Saturday, the IDF carried out a wave of airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including rocket launchers, with the army saying it had identified preparations by the terror group to launch major rocket attacks against Israel.
The military said that the airstrikes likely foiled the majority of Hezbollah’s planned rocket launches.
In all, thousands of rocket launcher barrels were hit in the strikes, the IDF said, while vowing to continue to strike Hezbollah to “dismantle and degrade” its capabilities.
At the same time, officials issued new restrictions for residents of the Haifa area and northward as the country braced for the possibility of an imminent large-scale assault by the Lebanese terror group after it suffered heavy blows in multiple attacks in recent days.
Amid the fighting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant held security consultations with ministers and top defense officials on Saturday night, and Israeli Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar said the IAF was on the highest level of alert.
The uptick in fighting came after Israel on Friday assassinated top Hezbollah commanders Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi, along with other top members of the group, in an airstrike on a residential building in Beirut, where the terror group leaders had gathered for a meeting in an underground room.
Aqil was head of Hezbollah’s military operations, acting commander of its elite Radwan Force and head of a long-gestating plan to invade the Galilee, while Wahbi, a former commander of the Radwan Force, was head of the terror group’s training unit.
The devastating strike was a further blow to the Iranian proxy and brought the sides closer to a full-scale war, after 11 months of near-daily Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 502 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 79 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
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