Hezbollah fires over 200 rockets into Israel after killing of senior commander

BEIRUT (AFP): Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones Thursday at Israeli military positions as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old Gaza war.

The Iran-backed militant group said its latest attack, which followed the launch of over 100 rockets the previous day, was in response to Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander.

Israel did not report any deaths in its northern border area, where most communities have been evacuated, but quickly said it had responded with air strikes on targets in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, have exchanged near daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, stoking fears that the clashes could escalate into a new all-out war.

The Israeli military said its forces were “striking launch posts in southern Lebanon” after “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” most of which were intercepted.

It said “fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel” following the attacks.

Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, near the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre.

A source close to the group described Nasser as the “Hezbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon.”

Hezbollah said that “as part of the response to the… assassination carried out by the enemy” it had fired “more than 200 rockets of various types” and “a squadron of explosive drones” at Israeli bases including in the annexed Golan Heights.

Air raid sires blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were intercepted by Israeli air defenses.

War on Gaza

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,953 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, have exchanged near daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted, stoking fears of an escalation.

The border clashes have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday that “we’re very worried about the escalation of the exchange of fire.”

He warned of the potential risks to the region “as a whole if we were to find ourselves in a full fledged conflict.”

The Gaza war has raged on, and gunbattles, air strikes and artillery shelling rocked Gaza City for an eight day as thousands of Palestinians joined an exodus of far-southern areas near Egypt after an army evacuation order.

Long-stalled efforts toward a Gaza truce and hostage release deal regained some momentum after Hamas said late Wednesday it had sent new “ideas” to mediators and Israel confirmed it was “evaluating” them.

The Israeli military said its troops are fighting militants in the streets of Gaza City and destroying their infrastructure, tunnel shafts and weapons depots.

Troops over the past day “destroyed tunnel routes in the area and eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat with tank fire, and in aerial strikes,” said the military.

Fears of renewed heavy fighting have also surged in Gaza’s southern areas near the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah after the military on Monday issued a sweeping evacuation order that the UN said impacted 250,000 people.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the army will destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages.

The United Nations has long urged a ceasefire, and its humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week again called for an end to the “maelstrom of human misery.”