Israel uses multiple airstrikes in southern Lebanon to eliminate the head of Hezbollah’s special forces. Over the past day, Israel has carried out several strikes on southern Lebanon, one of which resulted in the death of a top Hezbollah commander.
According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Mohammed Qassem Al-Shaer, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was killed on Tuesday in an attack on the village of Qaraoun in the western Beqaa district.
Al-Shaer had “advanced numerous terrorist activities against the state of Israel,” according to the IDF, and his “elimination” would make it more difficult for the militant group backed by Iran to attack Israel from southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah acknowledged that Al-Shaer had been slain and declared that it had fired “dozens” of Katyusha rockets and multiple drones at two points in northern Israel in retaliation.
The IDF said that some of the “projectiles” were intercepted and that others fell in an open area, but no casualties were reported. According to the IDF, in retaliation, it attacked Hezbollah launchers that were utilized in the attacks “in the areas of Mansouri and At Tiri.”
The IDF said on Wednesday that it had targeted 30 Hezbollah launchers and “terrorist infrastructure sites” in southern Lebanon over the course of the night because they “posed a threat to Israeli civilians.”
Multiple Israeli strikes were reported by the state media in Lebanon, NNA, throughout the course of the night. Some of these strikes resulted in “extensive damage” to buildings, crops, and property in the town of Al-Qlaileh.
Hezbollah confirmed the death of another fighter in a statement on Wednesday, but it did not specify the location or the reason for the death. It made no mention of the strikes either.
The Israeli military also said Tuesday its air force had struck a Hezbollah military structure in the village of Rachaf in the Nabatieh governorate of southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s emergency service said 12 people were wounded in the strike 12 on Rachaf.
The latest strikes come weeks after Israel said it had killed Hezbollah’s most senior military official, Fu’ad Shukr, in a drone strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a populous neighborhood that is also the Iran-backed group’s stronghold.
Shukr was the most high-ranking Hezbollah official to have been assassinated since 2016, when Mustafa Badreddine, the group’s top commander at the time, was killed in Syria.
The hostilities in July raised the specter of a regional conflagration, prompting intense diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions.
There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on October 7.
In the occupied West Bank, at least five people were killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, after the Israeli military said Wednesday it carried out operations in the areas of Tammon and Tubas.
