Hezbollah targets Israeli mountain base in ‘biggest’ airstrike | World news

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Sunday it had launched its “largest” air operation, sending explosive drones at an Israeli military intelligence base on a mountaintop in the annexed Golan Heights.

It is the latest incident in a series of escalating cross-border shootings that have sparked concern around the world.

Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed ally of Hamas, has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces almost daily since the Palestinian militia’s attack on Israel on October 7, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.

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In a statement announcing its air force’s “largest operation,” Hezbollah said its fighters had sent “several successive drone squadrons to the reconnaissance center” on Mount Hermon.

The Israeli military said a drone carrying explosives had “crashed in an open field in the Hermon Mountains area,” but that there were “no injuries.”

Both the attacks and the rhetoric have increased in recent weeks, fuelling fears of a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which were last at war in 2006.

The Lebanese movement said the drone strike was part of its “response” to the killing of an activist in an attack on Saturday deep in eastern Lebanon, about 100 kilometers from the border.

The attack on Mount Hermon targeted intelligence systems, which were “destroyed and caused a major fire,” Hezbollah said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops on Mount Hermon earlier Sunday, his office said.

In two further statements, the military said that its air defenses had “successfully intercepted” several “air targets” that flew in from Lebanon after sirens sounded in the Golan Heights area.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed them in a move largely ignored by the international community.

The Israeli attack on Saturday killed “an important official of Hezbollah’s air defense unit,” the military said.

During the course of Sunday, Hezbollah announced four more attacks on Israeli military bases across the border, firing both rockets and guided missiles. Israeli authorities reported four injuries.

In a video from Mount Hermon, Gallant stated that “even if there is a ceasefire in Gaza, we will continue to fight and do whatever is necessary to achieve the desired result in the fight against Hezbollah.”

According to an AFP count, at least 497 people were killed in the cross-border violence in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also 95 civilians.

On the Israeli side, at least 16 soldiers and eleven civilians were killed, according to authorities.

Tens of thousands of residents were displaced from the border areas in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.