11 hurt, three moderately, in overnight Hezbollah rocket attack on central Israel
IDF says Friday strikes killed two top members of terror group; Lebanon’s health ministry reports 52 dead, transport minister says Syrian border crossing forced shut
Eleven people were injured in the central Arab town of Tira on Saturday in an overnight rocket attack by Hezbollah, as Israel struck the Iran-backed terror group in Lebanon, killing dozens of people, including two senior Hezbollah members.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said three people sustained moderate injuries and eight were lightly injured by shrapnel and glass shards as one of three rockets launched by Hezbollah directly struck a home in Tira.
Seven others were treated for acute anxiety, MDA added.
Three rockets were launched in the attack triggering sirens in central Israel, shortly before 2:30 a.m., according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The IDF said the other two rockets were apparently successfully intercepted by air defenses.
Hezbollah took responsibility for the attack, claiming it had “fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base” outside Tel Aviv, where the IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit is headquartered — some 20 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Tira.
The Ynet news site cited Tira resident Ibrahim Qassem as saying there were just 40 seconds between the siren and the explosion. According to the IDF Home Front, Tira residents should have 90 seconds alert time.
Qassem said the blast damaged “everything, the doors, the windows, the car,” despite his living “a significant distance away” from the site of the explosion, according to Ynet.
Dashcam footage shows the moment a Hezbollah rocket struck the central town of Tira, and a video showing the aftermath of the attack, early November 2, 2024. (Courtesy; Magen David Adom)
Another resident, Tamer Abdelhay, told Walla that “in 90% of the homes there is no safe room or shelter, so there is nowhere to escape to… During the sirens, you can only pray.”
Another 20 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel in the morning, setting off sirens in the Galilee, Haifa Bay area, and Golan Heights.
Some of the rockets were intercepted and others struck open areas. There were no reports of injuries or major damage.
Also Saturday, several drones launched from Lebanon also set off sirens in the Haifa area.
According to the IDF, one of the drones was successfully shot down by the Israeli Air Force. Another drone reportedly impacted a factory building in an industrial zone near Nahariya. There were no reports of injuries in the attack.
Several drones were launched from Lebanon at northern Israel in the past hour, setting off sirens in the Haifa area.
According to the IDF, one of the drones was successfully shot down by the Israeli Air Force.
Another drone reportedly impacted a factory building in an… pic.twitter.com/5Cb0jqlOrw
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 2, 2024
Three more drones launched at Israel from Iraq were shot down by Israeli air defenses over the Red Sea on Saturday, according to the military.
The drones were launched “from the east,” a term the IDF uses to describe attacks from Iraq.
The Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq took responsibility for launching them, claiming to have targeted sites in Eilat. No sirens sounded in Eilat as the drones were shot down before entering Israeli airspace.
Throughout October alone, more than 100 drones were launched at Israel, mostly from Lebanon and Iraq.
חיל-האוויר יירט במהלך הלילה שבעה כטב״מים שכוונו לעבר שטח מדינת ישראל
במהלך הלילה שוגרו שבעה כטב״מים לעבר מדינת ישראל ממספר זירות, חיל האוויר באמצעות מטוסי ומסוקי קרב, ומערכות ההגנה האווירית יירט את כלל האיומים.
לאורך חודש אוקטובר יורטו יותר מ-100 כטב״מים.
צה״ל ימשיך לפעול… pic.twitter.com/lDhAJ63W82
— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) November 1, 2024
Hezbollah commanders killed
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s health ministry said 52 people had been killed in Israeli strikes in the country’s east on Friday — attacks for which the Israeli army had not issued evacuation warnings, as it often does.
Without differentiating between civilians and combatants, the ministry reported that “52 people killed and 72 wounded in an updated toll of today’s Israeli enemy strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel region.”
Twelve of the victims were killed in the village of Amhaz, it said, while nine others were killed in Yunin and eight in Bednayel.
The IDF said its airstrikes in the Tyre area on Friday had killed Moein Musa Izz al-Din, the commander of Hezbollah’s coastal regional unit, and Hassan Majed Diab, the commander of the unit’s artillery array.
Diab was responsible for a rocket barrage on the Haifa Bay area on Thursday, which killed a mother and son, along with more than 400 other rockets in the past month, according to the IDF.
Ali Hamieh, Lebanon’s Hezbollah-affiliated transport minister, said an Israeli strike near a border crossing between northeast Lebanon and Syria forced the crossing to shut after it had been partly reopened.
The strike hit the same location within Syria, just past the Syrian border installation, as an Israeli bombardment last month that closed the crossing, Hamieh said. It had been partly reopened for cars but not trucks, and was now closed again.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of smuggling Iranian arms into Lebanon via civilian border crossings with Syria.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly Syrians, have fled Lebanon for Syria since Israel stepped up its strikes in September.
The strikes came as Israeli troops continued ground operations against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The IDF said soldiers with the 91st and 146th divisions raided Hezbollah sites, seized weapons, and directed airstrikes on terror operatives during operations in the past day.
On Friday, during a tour of southern Lebanon, an army vehicle with the chief of the IDF Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, and chief of the Central Command, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, overturned.
Gordin was slightly hurt in the incident, and after a brief visit to a hospital, returned to duty, the IDF said.
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, amid fears Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack, and increasing rocket fire by the terror group.
The attacks on northern Israel since October 2023 have resulted in the deaths of 39 civilians. In addition, 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.
Two soldiers have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
The IDF estimates that more than 2,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.
