Hezbollah attacks Israeli barracks after death of Islamist commander

BEIRUT

The militant Lebanese Hezbollah group said on Sunday it had attacked a military position in northern Israel with an armed drone in response to the killing of an Islamist commander.

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Israel and the powerful Iran-backed group allied with Hamas have been trading cross-border shelling almost daily since the Gaza war broke out on October 7.

Hezbollah’s statement came hours after it released a video clip purporting to show locations in Israel and their coordinates, amid growing fears of a full-scale conflict between the two enemies.

On Saturday, the Jamaa Islamiya group announced the death of one of its commanders, Ayman Ghotmeh, who was killed “in a treacherous Zionist raid” in Khiara in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region.

Israel later confirmed the attack and said Ghotmeh was responsible for supplying weapons to the Fajr Forces, the armed wing of Jamaa Islamiya, and Hamas in the area.

Hezbollah said on Sunday that its fighters had launched an attack “with an attack drone” on a military command position in the Beit Hillel barracks “in response to the assassination attempt carried out by the Israeli enemy in the city of Khiara”.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said in a statement that a drone “flew in from Lebanon and crashed in the Beit Hillel area,” adding that “no injuries were reported.”

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Cross-border tensions have increased in recent days after the Israeli military announced on Tuesday that a plan for an offensive in Lebanon had been “approved and confirmed.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah responded by threatening that in the event of a full-scale war, no part of Israel would be spared.

The Lebanese armed group released a video on Saturday evening showing Israeli positions and coordinates, along with an excerpt from Nasrallah’s speech in which he says: “If war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without restrictions or rules.”

Days earlier, it had circulated a nine-minute video that allegedly showed aerial footage of northern Israel taken by the movement, including sensitive military, defense and energy facilities and infrastructure in the city and port of Haifa.

According to an AFP count, at least 480 people were killed in Lebanon as a result of the cross-border violence, most of them fighters but also 93 civilians.

According to Israeli authorities, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed in the north of the country.