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Several Israeli soldiers killed, over 60 injured in Hezbollah drone attack
A drone strike on an Israeli base near Binyamina, south of Haifa, killed four soldiers on Sunday night, while another 60 people were treated for mild to critical injuries, according to the Israeli volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah.
Hezbollah said the attack was in response to deadly Israeli strikes in Lebanon Thursday.
Hezbollah said it had targeted the Golani Brigade, an infantry unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that has been deployed in southern Lebanon. The claim of responsibility for the attack came shortly after the group released an audio message from its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah calling on its members to “defend your people, your family, your nation, your values and your dignity.”
Israeli air defense systems tend to be very reliable, but on Sunday, there were no reports of alerts in the Binyamina area at the time of the attack, raising questions of how the drone was able to penetrate so deep into the occupied territories without being spotted.
Hezbollah said it had fired dozens of rockets toward the northern Israeli towns of Nahariya and Acre to engage Israel’s air defense systems, while simultaneously launching the drone swarm.
The IDF’s top spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military would investigate how the drone got through without raising an alarm at the base.
Israeli forces on Monday launched a string of new air strikes on Lebanon, including one on the north of the country which killed at least 18 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
Israel also faced new criticism over their alleged attacks on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.
Just before Sunday’s attack, the Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system known as THAAD and its US military crew to Israel.
After almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli forces over the Lebanon border, Israel on September 23 intensified its strikes against targets in Lebanon and sent ground troops across the frontier a week later.