In the overnight and early Sunday morning hours Hezbollah has apparently retaliated against Israel for this week’s series of Beirut attacks which have left scores of Hezbollah operatives (long with many civilians) dead and injured.
Hezbollah has launched an attack on targets deep inside Israel in what is likely the longest range strike since the conflict began. Israel’s Haifa has been devastated waves of rockets, and significant damage on the ground has been revealed Sunday, including on Israeli residential neighborhoods.
The distance from Haifa to the Lebanese border is about 30km, or some 18 miles. Thus far through the conflict which began after Oct.7 last year, Hezbollah’s rockets have been concentrated to within a few miles deep inside Israel.
The early Sunday morning hours witnessed Hezbollah launch approximately 150 rockets into northern Israel. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that most were intercepted.
But videos from Haifa confirm that some rockets made it through anti-air defenses, causing devastation on the ground:
🔥 This is wild! For the 4th time today Hezbollah rained Haifa and the surrounding area with medium range missiles striking multiple targets. And this is still not a response to the Israeli terrorist attacks. This is welcoming Haifa into the new rules of engagement. pic.twitter.com/XB8dNAKEiP
— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) September 22, 2024
Hezbollah issued an official statement as follows: “In an initial response to the brutal massacre committed by the Israeli enemy in various Lebanese regions on Tuesday and Wednesday (the Pager and wireless devices massacre).”
“We bombed the military industries complexes of the Rafael Company, which specializes in electronic means and equipment, located in the Zevulun area north of Haifa, with dozens of Fadi 1, Fadi 2, and Katyusha missiles, at 6:30 am on this Sunday morning, September 22, 2024,” Hezbollah continued.
Another location, the Ramat David Military Airport, which lies south east of Haifa, was also hit. The base, which is one of the country’s largest, houses Israeli Air Force fighter jets. This retaliation marks significant escalation in terms of the Shia paramilitary group’s targeting and range.
The attacks sowed chaos in Haifa and surrounding towns, resulting in at least one death:
Some 85 rockets were launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon at the Haifa area in northern Israel on Sunday morning, following overnight launches at the Jezreel Valley, the terror group’s deepest rocket fire into Israel since the beginning of the war in October.
A teenager was killed when he crashed his vehicle as sirens sounded in the early hours of the morning, and at least three people were injured as a result of the rocket fire.
A settler from Kiryat Bialik, north of occupied Haifa, told Zionist newspaper Maariv:
“We have never seen anything like this before, not even in 2006. We all assumed that there would be a response from Hezbollah, but we did not think it would be this strong, especially when… pic.twitter.com/NYK6gEwn7L
— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) September 22, 2024
There are reports suggesting coordination with Iran-linked Iraqi paramilitaries as well:
According to the Associated Press, one rocket caused damage near a residential building in Kiryat Bialik, a city near Haifa. Emergency medical services announced that one man was “lightly wounded by shrapnel from a missile,” according to Reuters. The Times of Israel reported two further injuries.
Around the same time, Israeli air defenses intercepted “two cruise missiles and two drones fired from Iraq, none of which hit Israeli territory,” the military claimed via the Times of Israel.
Israeli authorities have ordered the closure of all schools and banned public gatherings across the north, where at least 80,000 citizens have remained in a permanent state of evacuation going back to last October.
More destruction. Hezbollah announced that a target in the attacks was an initial response to the pager massacres in Lebanon. They bombed the military industries complexes of the Rafael company, which specializes in electronic means and equipment. Meaning more responses to come pic.twitter.com/bMWd0WtQ2J
— Hadi (@HadiNasrallah) September 22, 2024
Among the harrowing videos to appear online is one showing a direct Hezbollah missile strike on a home in Haifa. An elderly lady says it’s a miracle she escaped the attack unharmed:
A Haifa woman whose home sustained a direct hit in a Hezbollah rocket attack early this morning says she “hates to think what might have happened” if she wasn’t able to take cover in her safe room during the impact.
“It’s a miracle,” Zehava Sofer tells Channel 12. Sofer says she could hear loud explosions from inside the safe room in her home in Kiryat Bialik, a suburb of the northern coastal city, and that she stayed put until rescue workers arrived to extract her.
“Everything in the two upstairs rooms was burned,” she said. “The rest of the house I’m not sure, I haven’t checked yet.”
Below: direct missile strike on Israeli residential building in port city of Haifa:
POV: You’re a terrorist the just woke up in Haifa pic.twitter.com/NMMGWM2Na3
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) September 22, 2024
She expressed frustration that the fighting on the border has persisted for nearly a year: “We can’t live like this anymore. It’s enough. It’s just lucky I didn’t have small children at home,” she told Israeli media.
The IDF says it has ramped up offensive operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in order to restore safety to northern Israel, but looks like there will be a long war ahead.
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