Hezbollah fires over 200 rockets at Israel after top commander killed

BEIRUT (AP) — The Lebanese terror group Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets Thursday at several military bases in Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed one of its top commanders.

The attack by the Iran-backed militant group was one of the largest in the months-long conflict along Lebanon's border with Israel. Tensions have been rising in recent weeks.

The Israeli military said “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets” had entered its territory from Lebanon, and that many of them had been intercepted. No casualties were immediately reported.

He said that about 200 “projectiles” were launched towards the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and more than 20 drones towards Israeli territory, but that he had intercepted some of them.

Following the Hezbollah attack, Israel struck several cities in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah “military structures” in the southern border towns of Ramyeh and Houla. Lebanon's National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike on Houla killed at least one person. Israeli warplanes also broke the sound barrier over the Lebanese capital and other parts of the country.

Israel admitted on Wednesday that it had killed Mohammed Naameh Nasserwho the day before headed one of Hezbollah's three regional divisions in southern Lebanon.

A few hours after the murder, Hezbollah The Israeli military launched dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets, carrying heavy nuclear warheads, toward northern Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. It launched more rockets on Thursday and said it also sent explosive drones to several bases.

Hashem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah's Executive Council, vowed that the group would continue its retaliatory attacks, “targeting new sites that it never imagined would be hit.”

“The enemy sometimes recognizes these blows and sometimes not, but it is certain that there were many victims,” ​​he said at Nasser's funeral.

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

The United States and France continue to do everything in their power to prevent the skirmishes from escalating into an open war, which could spread throughout the region. In its diplomatic efforts, Washington initially hoped for calm on the Lebanese-Israeli border as part of an agreement that is not linked to the war in Gaza. However, since the United States called on Hamas to accept a ceasefire proposal put forward by President Joe Biden, it has said that an end to the war in Gaza would also bring calm to Lebanon and northern Israel.

The relatively low-level conflict erupted shortly after the outbreak of the Gaza war. Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group that sparked the Gaza war with its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. The group's leadership says it will to cease its attacks once a ceasefire is established in Gazaand that, even if he does not want war, he is ready for it.

Israeli officials, for their part, 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 a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, met with French President Emmanuel Macron's envoy to Lebanon, 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 have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 450 people, mostly fighters but also dozens of civilians, have been killed.

Israel considers Hezbollah its most direct 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.