US wants ‘de-escalation’ in north after Hezbollah fires largest rocket volley of war
Terror group vows to intensify attacks after top
commander killed in Israeli strike; Iran’s Quds Force official says
Hezbollah has 1 million rockets in arsenal
The United States on Wednesday urged “de-escalation” along Israel’s
northern border after Hezbollah launched over 200 rockets, its largest
barrage in the ongoing war, in response to Israel’s killing of a senior
commander in the terror group.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and his US counterpart Lloyd Austin
discussed efforts to “de-escalate tensions along the Israel-Lebanon
border in the wake of Lebanese Hezbollah’s increased aggression,” a
Pentagon statement said.
“We are concerned about an increase in activity in the north. We
don’t want this to escalate to a broad regional conflict and we urge
de-escalation,” a deputy Pentagon spokesperson told reporters after the
call.
Hezbollah fired some 215 rockets at northern Israel Wednesday in
response to the strike that killed Taleb Sami Abdullah, its most senior
commander to die by Israel’s hand since the round of violence started
eight months ago. The terror group began launching daily attacks on
northern communities on October 8, saying it was doing so to support
Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
The rockets and their interceptions sparked several fires in the
north, which were brought under control by firefighters by the evening.
Hezbollah vowed to intensify its attacks along the border to avenge Abdullah’s death.
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A speech made near the coffin of Taleb
Abdullah, known as Abu Taleb, a senior field commander of the Hezbollah
terror group who was killed in an Israeli strike, during his funeral in
Beirut’s southern suburbs on June 12, 2024. (Photo by ANWAR AMRO / AFP)
“Our response after the martyrdom of Abu Taleb will be to intensify
our operations in severity, strength, quantity, and quality,” senior
Hezbollah official Hashem Saffieddine said during Abdullah’s funeral
ceremony. “Let the enemy wait for us on the battlefield.”
Abdullah was behind numerous attacks on northern Israel in the past
eight months, mostly against the city of Kiryat Shmona and other towns
and army positions in the Galilee Panhandle, Upper Galilee, and the
Golan Heights area, the IDF said.
Abdullah was also considered by the IDF to be a “source of knowledge”
with many years of experience in the terror group. He was involved in a
2005 attempted kidnapping in Ghajar in northern Israel, and in the 2006
Second Lebanon War he was the commander of the Bint Jbeil area,
according to the military.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security assessment in the
evening “in light of the developments in the north, and Hamas’s negative
response regarding the release of the hostages,” his office said.
An official in Iran’s Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s
expeditionary wing that oversees Tehran’s proxies across the Middle
East, told Foreign Policy
in a report published Wednesday that precision-guided missiles,
Katyusha rockets with boosted accuracy, and anti-tank missiles are part
of Hezbollah’s arsenal, which includes over a million rockets of
different types.
Should a full-scale war break out between Israel and Hezbollah along
the country’s northern border, Israel’s health system could collapse and
extended power outages could become the norm if thousands of rockets
are launched daily at Israel, the Kan public broadcaster reported in February, citing a Health Ministry document.
Overnight, Israeli fighter jets struck several buildings used by
Hezbollah in southern Lebanon’s Ayta ash-Shab, the military said.
Additional Hezbollah infrastructure was stuck in Aynata, the IDF added.
Meanwhile, the IDF said that sirens that sounded Thursday morning in
the northern towns of Klil and Yehiam were triggered by an interceptor
missile launched at a target that was later determined not to have been a
threat, aka a “false identification.”
Several more sirens in the Kiryat Shmona area on Thursday were also false alarms, the IDF said.
So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in 10 civilian
deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 15 IDF soldiers
and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without
any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 342 members who have been killed by Israel during
the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In
Lebanon, another 62 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese
soldier, and dozens of civilians have been killed.
Israel has expressed openness to a diplomatic solution to the
conflict but in the absence of one has threatened to go to war against
Hezbollah to restore security to the north of Israel, from where tens of
thousands of civilians are currently displaced.
While Israel’s political echelon has not yet made a decision on
launching an offensive in Lebanon and turning the Gaza Strip into the
secondary front, the IDF said it continues to target Hezbollah
commanders behind attacks on Israel.
