Two people were killed in a rocket attack on the border town of Kiryat Shmona Wednesday, as Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel and military forces aimed heavy air and ground fire at the Lebanese terror group.
The pair of fatalities, which marked the first deadly attack on civilians since fighting between Israel and Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
intensified late last month, came on a day that also saw five people injured in a large rocket barrage on Haifa.
In southern Lebanon, Israeli troops continued to carry out raids, engaging in close combat with Hezbollah forces and carrying out strikes from the air, including against operatives who killed an officer last week, the Israel Defense Forces said. Three soldiers were seriously injured in fighting over the past day, according to the IDF.
Hezbollah took responsibility for the strikes Wednesday, including a volley on Kiryat Shmona early Wednesday afternoon that it claimed had targeted "enemy forces" mustering outside the Galilee Panhandle city.
According to the IDF, some 20 projectiles were fired at the Kiryat Shmona area from Lebanon in the attack, with an unspecified number impacting inside Israel.
The two victims, who were not immediately named, were identified in Hebrew-language media as a civilian couple who had been walking their dogs and were unable to reach a shelter in time. Medics declared the two dead at the scene, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service, which said the pair had been in their 40s. The pair were the first civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks since early August, when a student visiting his family was fatally struck by an errant interceptor missile.
The Kiryat Shmona attack, which also sparked a number of fires in the city, was one of several major bombardments to batter Israeli cities over Wednesday.
At least 40 more rockets were fired at Haifa from Lebanon early Wednesday afternoon, the IDF said, and rockets also rained on other cities across the Galilee, including Safed, which appeared to come under major attack before 5 p.m. A 16-year-old boy was moderately injured by shrapnel from the Haifa attack, MDA said, while four others in their 40s and 50s were hospitalized with minor injuries.
At least one rocket impacted in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Bialik, causing power outages in the city.
Earlier in the day, air defenses intercepted two missiles launched from Lebanon at the Carmel region south of Haifa. The attack triggered rare sirens in cities in Israel’s northern coastal plain, including Caesarea and Zichron Yaakov.
Hezbollah has lobbed over 3,000 rockets at Israel’s north — and in some cases beyond — since Israel launched an offensive on September 23 aimed at removing the terror group from southern Lebanon following a year of near-daily cross border attacks. Israel says it is seeking to make it safe for some 60,000 people displaced by the Hezbollah attacks since October 2023 to return home, including by eliminating the threat of a Hamas-style cross-border rampage it alleges Hezbollah had planned to unleash on northern towns.
The Israeli military said it has dismantled Hezbollah infrastructure along the border and killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters. It has also carried out
...
KABOOM!...
s deeper inside Lebanon, including an attack on a coastal town near Sidon that Lebanon said killed four people Wednesday. It did not say if the four were civilians or combatants.
The IDF said Wednesday three soldiers had been seriously maimed in the fighting in southern Lebanon over the last 24 hours: an NCO and a reservist from the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 seriously hurt on Tuesday and a soldier from the Alon Brigade’s 8207th Battalion seriously injured on Wednesday.
Four divisions have been deployed along a narrow strip along the border in southern Lebanon, with the army saying Tuesday that operations were expanding toward the west.
During the past day of fighting in southern Lebanon, several Hezbollah button men were killed and weapons and rocket launchers were uncovered by ground troops, the military said in a statement. In one village, paratroopers found hundreds of weapons and a 7-meter-deep bunker.
Overnight airstrikes hit around 185 Hezbollah sites, the army said, including a weapons factory and intelligence command center located amid civilian sites in the southern Beirut suburb known as Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold. Other targets included sites where cells of operatives were gathered, observation posts, rocket launchers and weapons depots, the IDF said.
The army released footage of a dronezap that it said killed two Hezbollah operatives who had killed Cpt. Ben Zion Falach, 21, of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 202nd Battalion, during an exchange of fire in southern Lebanon on October 2.
The IDF did not specify when the airstrike took place.
Another operative was killed in an exchange of fire in a building, the IDF added.
On the ground, Israeli troops razed the so-called Garden of Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras, and raised an Israeli flag over the area. The park, located less than a kilometer from the Israeli border, used to feature a statue of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps assassinated Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani
, pointing at Israel and a replica of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. Footage shared on social media on Tuesday showed the heavily damaged park following Israeli operations in the area, and troops placing an Israeli flag where an Iranian one once flew.Since October 8, 2023, 33 IDF soldiers and reservists have been killed in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon.
Two soldiers in northern Israel have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 516 members — including its leader, His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
— who have been killed by Israel during the war, mostly in Lebanon but also some in Syria. Lebanon says over 1,300 people have been killed in Israel’s offensive and over a million people displaced.
Israel says at least 440 Hezbollah operatives have been killed since it launched the offensive in September alone.