Israel on Wednesday said it shot down a missile fired by Hezbollah toward Tel Aviv, the first time the Iran-backed militia group had fired at one of Israel’s most populated cities.
Hezbollah said the missile targeted the headquarters of the Israeli Mossad spy service, believed to have coordinated an unusual attack that exploded thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon, killing 39 and injuring thousands, last week.
Israel’s military said war sirens sounded across central Israel, but nobody was injured. Its air defense systems intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired from a village in Lebanon, but the missile was headed towards “civilian areas,” not the Mossad’s headquarters.
“The Mossad headquarters is not in that area,” Spokesman Nadav Shoshani said.
Israel continues intense strikes targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon
Israeli warplanes continued to pummel southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah hub, on Wednesday. The military said in a statement it hit 60 targets of Hezbollah’s intelligence directorate, including “intelligence-gathering tools, command centers, and additional infrastructure.”
At least 23 people were reported dead in Wednesday’s airstrikes, Lebanon’s health ministry.
The Lebanese army evacuated more than 60 people from the village of Alma Chaab, on the southern border with Israel, after intense airstrikes overnight.
Meanwhile, Israel’s northern Galilee region endured a heavy rain of Hezbollah rockets – around 40 were fired in one burst.
One rocket hit an assisted living facility in the town of Safed, but no one was injured, authorities said.
More:Middle East tensions flare: What to know about escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting
Israel-Hezbollah fighting escalates
For almost a year, the Iran-backed militant group has intensified firing of rockets into northern Israel. Tensions on that border have increased since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel responded by launching military strikes on Gaza that have killed about 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry.
U.S. officials are concerned that a ratcheting up of tensions could lead to a broader regional conflict in the Middle East and have been trying to negotiate a cease-fire.
The increase in fighting pushed Israel and Hezbollah closer to an all-out war. Many fear a larger conflict could wreak unprecedented destruction on the region and escalate tensions between the U.S. and Iran – Israel’s and Hezbollah’s respective allies.
Contributing: Reuters
