Hezbollah fires 200 rockets at northern Israel on Thursday, one IDF soldier dies

The killed IDF soldier, hit by a rocket in the Golan Heights, was identified as 38-year-old Res. Itay Galea.

According to the Jerusalem Post, fires broke out in several areas and there were initial reports of several injuries on the Israeli side.

Sirens were heard in some northern Israeli towns in the early hours as the Lebanon-based terror group fired on cities such as Acre and Nahariya, which are not usually targeted, in one of Hezbollah’s fiercest attacks on neighboring Israel since the war with Hamas began in October.

In response, Israeli forces said they carried out a series of air strikes on suspected Hezbollah launch sites in Ramyeh, Houla, Shihine and the Jabal Blat area of ​​southern Lebanon.

According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah launched attacks towards the Golan Heights. However, some of the attacks were intercepted by Israeli air defense missiles and Israeli Air Force forces.

This comes as the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry says there have now been more than 38,000 deaths and 87,445 injuries since Hamas’ attack on Israel.

The Israeli military and Hezbollah have been engaged in daily battles, largely confined to parts of southern Lebanon and northern Israel, since the Lebanese militant group entered the fighting in southern Israel, a day after Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7 that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

But Israel was preparing for the attacks, which are a direct response to Wednesday’s killing of Muhammad Nimah Nasser, Hezbollah’s second-highest commander, who was killed in Israeli military strikes in the coastal city of Tyre, the Times of Israel reported.

Hezbollah responded in kind by firing at least 100 rockets into northern Israel by Wednesday afternoon local time.

Amid rising tensions along the Lebanese border, the United States recently deployed an amphibious assault ship in the Eastern Mediterranean to serve as a military deterrent and show of force.

However, the Iranian proxy militia is not ready to start a full-scale war against Israel, but prefers to maintain the status quo of a “gray zone war,” analysts told UPI in January.

Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon. It has “an extensive security apparatus,” a political organization and a network of social services, which has reinforced its reputation as a “state within a state,” explains the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah was founded in the chaos of the 15-year-old Lebanese civil war and, like Hamas, is “driven by its opposition to Israel and resistance to Western influence in the Middle East.”

Another senior Hezbollah official has indicated that attacks are likely to continue to increase.

Last week, Israel attacked Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent Hezbollah airstrikes from southern Lebanon on Kibbutz Misgav Am along the Israeli-Lebanese border. No casualties were reported at the time.

“The series of reactions continues uninterrupted and this series will continue to target new places that the enemy did not expect to be hit,” Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah leader, said in Beirut at the commemoration of Nasser.