Hezbollah says it has fired 200 rockets into Israel in one of its largest barrages yet as part of a revenge attack following the death of one of its top commanders.
Pictures and videos posted on social media show plumes of smoke rising from Northern Israel after Abu Ali Nasser, Commander of Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit, was killed by the Israeli Air Force.
The strike targeted southern Lebanon on Wednesday before Hezbollah retaliated by firing more than 200 rockets into Israel today.
Now, Israel is believed to be forming a massive retaliation after reports the country was “burning”.
The attack by the Iran-backed militant group on Thursday was one of the largest in the monthslong conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border, with tensions boiling in recent weeks.
The Israeli military said “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets” had entered its territory from Lebanon, many of which it said were intercepted. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The attack came after the Lebanon-based group said it had launched rockets with heavy warheads targeting the headquarters of the Israeli military’s 769th Brigade in Kiryat Shmona.
Another 100 salvos of Katyusha rockets targeted the headquarters of Israel’s 210th division and the Kilaa air base in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Later, the group said it attacked the Zaarit barracks near the border with Burkan rockets, another type of rocket with heavy warheads like the Falaq.
International diplomats are scrambling to prevent the near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiralling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer.
Hezbollah maintains it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group that ignited the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel.
The group’s leadership has said it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in Gaza, and that while it does not want war, it is ready for one.
Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war.
At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out.
Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the tense frontier have been displaced in the monthslong war.
Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon since October have killed over 450 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but the dead also include more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.