Israeli jets preemptively strike Hezbollah launch sites

Israeli Air Force jets struck roughly 40 locations associated with the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah early Sunday morning, IDF spokesman Ladav Shoshani said. The IDF struck first on the belief that Hezbollah was planning a mass launch of rockets, Shoshani said. Hezbollah has been launching missile attacks on Israel for more than 10 months, he told reporters in a virtual news conference. Authorities have evacuated roughly 60,000 Israelis from their homes as a result of those earlier attacks, Shoshani added.

The Iran-backed terrorist group began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, when it launched an unprovoked missile attack on Israel, Shoshani said. The attack came a day after militants from another Iran-backed terrorist group, Hamas, swarmed into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel in that attack and abducted over 200 hostages. Iran has armed Hezbollah with thousands of missiles and drones it can launch at Israel, Shoshani said.

What did Hezbollah say about its attack? Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech later on Sunday that it could still launch other strikes in the future. The group’s Sunday attack was meant as retaliation for the July killing of its senior military official Fu’ad Shukr, Nasrallah reportedly said.

What happened early on Sunday? The Israeli military on Saturday received a warning that Hezbollah militants were planning a large-scale missile attack against Israel, Shoshani said. The Israeli military scrambled fighter jets to preempt the attack. Hezbollah still managed to launch roughly 150 missiles at Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday. Israeli air defenses downed a majority of the rockets, the IDF said. Hezbollah’s missiles targeted civilian locations, while Israel’s attacks targeted terrorist infrastructure, the IDF said.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about how Hezbollah poses a much larger threat to Israel than Hamas.