Hezbollah hits Israel’s Iron Dome with guided missile
UN to blacklist Israel for harming children
Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement said it has hit an Iron Dome launcher with a guided missile in what could be the first hit on the regime’s defense system.
The Lebanese group released a video on Wednesday that confirms the attack.
The 90-second clip, captured from the missile’s onboard camera, shows it flying towards an Iron Dome launcher at a military base in the northern Israeli settlement of Ramot Naftali near Lebanon. The feed cuts out just before impact.
On Thursday, the Israel’s military claimed that it was not aware of any damage to its launchers.
It could be the first time that a missile launcher – one part of the Iron Dome along with radar and control centers – has been hit in an attack.
“It appears Hezbollah did hit the Iron Dome launcher with a guided missile,” said Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
An image emerged Thursday on social media showing the damaged launcher, confirming it was struck.
Since October, Hezbollah movement has been exchanging fire with Israeli military in support of Palestinian resistance groups in the Gaza Strip where Israeli regime has killed more than 36,700 people – mostly women and children.
The United Nations has decided to add Israel as a regime that harms children in conflict zones, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told Israel’s defense attaché in the US, Major General Hedy Silberman, Israeli media reported on Thursday.
Despite Israel’s weeks-long efforts to dissuade Guterres from taking this step, Israel is expected to be included on the list to be published next week as part of a report to the UN Security Council, according to local Channel 13 News.
Last month, Ynet News reported that Israeli officials were increasingly concerned the move was imminent, with sources saying, “The current secretary-general hates Israel and it is no longer possible to influence him.”
“The meaning of Israel’s inclusion in the blacklist is very problematic and may cause countries in the world to impose an arms embargo on Israel,” the sources said.
According to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education and Higher Education, more than 15,000 children have been killed since the start of the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip. It noted that the majority of those killed by Israel are school and kindergarten students. Moreover, 64 students from schools in the West Bank, including Al-Quds, have also been killed in the past eight months.
On Friday, Israeli forces bombarded a Gaza refugee camp after a deadly strike on a UN-run school there.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, said at least 37 people were killed in Thursday’s Israeli strike on the UN-run school in Nuseirat camp.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering at the school, which was “hit without prior warning”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the strike as “horrific”, while Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid condemned what he called the “deliberate bombing of an UNRWA school”.
“Israeli violations of Palestinian rights continue day after day, in full view of the civilized world,” Zeid said on X.