Hezbollah fires over 200 rockets at Israel after killing a senior commander

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said it fired more than 200 rockets at several military bases in Israel on Thursday in retaliation for an attack that killed one of its senior commanders.

The attack by the Iran-backed militant group was one of the largest in the months-long conflict along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Tensions have escalated in recent weeks.

The Israeli military said that “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets” had entered Israeli territory from Lebanon. Many of them were intercepted. It confirmed the death of a soldier in the shelling.

It said that about 200 “projectiles” were fired towards the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and over 20 drones were fired at Israeli territory, but some of them were intercepted.

Following the Hezbollah attack, Israel attacked several towns in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah’s “military structures” in the southern border towns of Ramyeh and Houla. The Lebanese state news agency reported that an Israeli drone strike on Houla killed at least one person. Israeli jets also broke the sound barrier over the Lebanese capital Beirut and other areas of the country.

Israel admitted on Wednesday to killing Mohammad Naameh Nasserwho the day before headed one of Hezbollah’s three regional divisions in southern Lebanon.

Hours after the murder Hezbollah has fired dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets with heavy warheads at northern Israel and the Golan Heights. On Thursday, more rockets were fired and several bases were attacked with exploding drones. Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau, from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. The US recognizes this move, but the international community rejects it.

Hashem Safieddine, chairman of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, assured that the group would continue its retaliatory attacks “on new locations that it never thought would be hit.”

“Sometimes the enemy acknowledges these attacks, sometimes not, but what is certain is that there have been many casualties,” he said at Nasser’s funeral.

Nasser was of great importance to Hezbollah. Hezbollah said he fought in conflicts in Syria and Iraq from 2011 to 2016 and fought in the group’s last war against Israel in 2006. Two other senior Hezbollah commanders were also killed.

The US and France continue to try to prevent the skirmishes from escalating into a full-scale war that they fear could spill over into the entire region. Washington’s diplomatic efforts initially hoped for calm on the Lebanese-Israeli border through a deal unrelated to the war in Gaza. But since urging Hamas to agree to a ceasefire proposal put forward by President Joe Biden, the US has said an end to the war in Gaza would also bring calm to Lebanon and northern Israel.

The relatively low-level conflict erupted soon after the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah says it is attacking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-aligned group that sparked the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The group’s leadership says it will to stop its attacks as soon as there is a ceasefire in Gazaand that although it does not want war, it is ready for war.

Meanwhile, Israeli government officials say they could decide to go to war in Lebanon if efforts to find a diplomatic solution fail.

Hezbollah’s retaliation comes a day after Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, met with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Lebanon envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Paris.

The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed. In Lebanon, more than 450 people were killed – most of them fighters, but also dozens of civilians.

Israel views Hezbollah as its greatest threat and estimates that it has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles, including precision-guided missiles.

In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war that ended in a draw.