Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel and threatens new attacks

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions on Thursday, vowing to intensify its attacks after killing a senior commander a day earlier, amid rising tensions in the nearly nine-month war in Gaza.

The Iran-backed militant group said its latest attack, which followed the launch of over 100 rockets on Wednesday, was a response to Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, near the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre.

A source close to the group described him as “the Hezbollah commander in charge of one of three sectors in southern Lebanon.” Another commander in the border sector was killed in an Israeli attack last month.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that its forces were “attacking launch positions in southern Lebanon” after “numerous missiles and suspicious aerial targets entered Israeli territory from Lebanon.”

It said most of the attacks were intercepted by air defense systems, but following the attacks, “fires broke out in several areas in northern Israel.”

Israel reported no casualties in its northern border area, where most communities were evacuated, but immediately said it had responded with attacks on targets in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it had fired “more than 200 rockets” and “a squadron of explosive drones” at Israeli bases “as part of its response to the attacks carried out by the enemy.”

In the morning, air raid sirens blared throughout northern Israel, and a AFP The correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the border and being intercepted.

In response to Nasser’s killing, senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine threatened to attack other locations in Israel.

“The series of responses continues uninterrupted and this series will continue to target new locations that the enemy did not expect to be hit,” Safieddine said on Thursday at the memorial ceremony for the commander-in-chief.

Since the outbreak of the Gaza war on October 7, there have been almost daily cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Hamas, fueling fears that the clashes could escalate into open war.

UN chief Antonio Guterres is “very concerned about the escalation of the exchange of fire,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday, warning of the risks for the wider Middle East “if we find ourselves in a full-blown conflict.”

Hezbollah and Hamas are part of an Iran-led “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, a regional alliance that also includes the Yemeni Houthi rebels and militias in Iraq and Syria.