A Hizbullah drone attack on an army base in central Israel has killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.
It was the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
Lebanon-based Hizbullah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It later said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defence systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.
Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61 people. It is rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles in the country due to the extent of Israel’s air defence systems.
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Hizbullah and Israel have traded fired almost daily in the year since the war in Gaza began, and fighting has escalated.
The strike came on the day the US announced it would send a new air defence system to Israel to help bolster protection against missiles, along with troops needed to operate it.
Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon — both Iran-backed militant groups — and is expected to strike Iran in retaliation for a missile attack earlier this month. Iran has said it will respond to any Israeli attack.
Meanwhile, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as Unifil said Israeli tanks forcibly entered the gates of one position early on Sunday and destroyed the main gate, and later fired smoke rounds near peacekeepers. Unifil called the incident a “further flagrant violation of international law”.
International criticism is growing as Israeli forces have repeatedly fired on UN peacekeepers since the start of the ground operation in Lebanon. Five peacekeepers have been wounded in attacks that struck their positions, with most blamed on Israeli forces.
The IDF says Hizbullah operates in the peacekeepers’ vicinity. It said said a tank trying to evacuate wounded soldiers backed into a UN post on Sunday while under fire. It said a smokescreen was used to provide cover.
Army spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani said Israel has tried to maintain constant contact with Unifil and any instance of UN forces being harmed will be investigated at “the highest level”.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for Unifil to heed Israel’s warnings to evacuate, accusing them of “providing a human shield” to Hizbullah.
“We regret the injury to the Unifil soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injury. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone,” he said in a video addressed to the UN secretary-general, who has been banned from entering Israel.
Israel has long accused the UN of being biased against it and relations have plunged further since the start of the war in Gaza.
Hizbullah began firing rockets into Israel a day after Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023, drawing retaliatory air strikes. The conflict escalated in September with Israeli strikes that killed Hizbullah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his senior commanders.
Israel launched a ground operation earlier this month. More than 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since September, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were Hizbullah fighters.
At least 58 people have been killed in rocket attacks on Israel, nearly half of them soldiers.
Israeli air strikes overnight destroyed an Ottoman-era market in Lebanon’s southern city of Nabatiyeh, killing at least one person and wounding four. The Israeli military said it struck Hizbullah targets, without elaborating, and said it continued to target the militants on Sunday.
Separately, the Lebanese Red Cross said paramedics were searching for casualties in a house destroyed by an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon when a second strike left four paramedics with concussion and damaged two ambulances.
The Red Cross said the operation had been co-ordinated with UN peacekeepers, who informed the Israeli side. - AP