The Islamic paramilitary group Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel to avenge the death of its top commander, Fouad Shukr, who was killed in an airstrike on Beirut last month. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has said it carried out preemptive strikes against the Lebanon-based militia after concluding that the attack was imminent.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 320 rockets at 11 Israeli military sites in a statement issued early on Sunday, including those in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It added that the attack came “within the framework of the first response to the brutal Zionist aggression on the southern suburbs of Beirut,” in which Shukr was killed.
Israel had earlier claimed that it had targeted Shukr because he was responsible for a deadly shelling of a soccer field in the Golan Heights that killed 12 minors.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that it had launched a preemptive strike on Hezbollah after identifying “extensive preparation” by the group to launch an attack. It said that around 100 Israeli jets “struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels” in southern Lebanon, releasing footage of an intensive bombardment.
It also estimated that some 210 rockets and 20 drones had been launched at Israeli targets. “We foiled most of Hezbollah’s planned attack, and we intercepted many of the threats launched at Israel,” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari has said.
Hezbollah, however, insisted that Israel’s preemptive strike had not disrupted its activities.
Israel and Hezbollah have routinely exchanged cross-border artillery and rocket fire since the war with Hamas in Gaza began in October, but the clashes have so far stopped short of a full-scale direct engagement.
At the same time, fears of a new regional escalation have been fueled by the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a bombing in Tehran. Both Tehran and Hamas have accused Israel of orchestrating the attack; West Jerusalem has neither confirmed nor denied its role in the assassination.