ISRAEL.- Around 160 projectiles were fired from Lebanon against northern Israel this Wednesday, the Israeli army announced, the day after the death of a senior official of the pro-Iran Hezbollah movement in that country.
Hezbollah announced in four statements that it had fired “several Katyusha missiles” at three Israeli military bases, and claimed to have hit “a military factory” with guided missiles “in retaliation for the assassination” of commander Taleb Sami Abdallah, alias Abu Taleb, a senior member of the Lebanese Shiite movement.
According to the Israeli army, some 160 projectiles were launched from Lebanon on Israeli territory this Wednesday morning, in two rounds and without causing casualties according to the first information.
Some projectiles were intercepted, but others reached northern Israel and started fires in several places. “The majority fell on open ground and some in towns in northern Israel,” the army said.
Taleb Sami Abdallah was killed with three other Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli strike that targeted a house they were in in the southern Lebanese village of Juaiyya on Tuesday, according to a source close to the pro-Iran movement.
Contacted by AFP, an Israeli army spokesman said he could not confirm whether Israel carried out the attack that killed this Hezbollah military official.
A Lebanese military source declared that commander Abu Taleb is the “most important Hezbollah figure killed” since the Shiite movement opened a front with Israel on October 8, the day after the conflict in Gaza between Hamas and the Jewish state began. .
At least 467 people have died in Lebanon after more than eight months of cross-border attacks, most of them combatants, but also almost 90 civilians according to AFP estimates.
On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed, according to authorities. On both sides of the border, tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes due to ongoing hostilities.
Source: With information from AFP/AP
