Hezbollah fires rockets, drones throughout Yom Kippur; Herzliya retirement home hit by UAV
Drone strikes retirement home in coastal town, no injuries; IDF orders more south Lebanon villages evacuated, faces rising world criticism for hitting UN position amid fighting
Hezbollah continued to launch rockets and drones into Israel throughout Yom Kippur over the weekend, with a Herzliya retirement home hit by a UAV on Friday, causing damage but no casualties.
At the same time, Israeli forces continued their operations in southern Lebanon, ordering more villages evacuated as they worked to root out and destroy Hezbollah infrastructure.
Dozens of rockets were launched at Israel on Friday and Saturday, activating sirens in Haifa, Safed and numerous northern towns.
On Friday evening sirens sounded in Herzliya and a retirement home was hit in a drone attack from Lebanon. There were no injuries.
The military said two drones were tracked from the moment they crossed the border, and fighter jets managed to down one of them.
It did not explain why the second drone was not downed en route, and stated only that it was “investigating the incident.”
Footage posted to social media showed a drone flying low over buildings in the city.
כטבם טייל לו בשכונה שלי ביום כיפור. כל הילדים היו ברחוב עם אופניים מבוהלים. pic.twitter.com/x9ofCNubNC
— Amir???? (@kraitzer) October 11, 2024
Rocket attacks targeting northern Israel continued into Saturday, with no reports of damage or casualties.
Meanwhile on Saturday, the Israeli military ordered residents of 22 more southern Lebanese villages to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, according to a statement.
It also warned residents of south Lebanon “not to return” to their homes as troops fight Hezbollah in the area.
Israeli forces continue to “target Hezbollah posts in or near your villages,” the military’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X. “For your own protection, do not return to your homes until further notice. Do not go south; anyone who goes south may put his life at risk.”
In a separate post, Adraee reiterated an earlier call for health workers and medical teams in southern Lebanon to avoid using ambulances, saying they are being used by Hezbollah fighters.
“We call on medical teams to avoid contact with Hezbollah members and not to cooperate with them,” he said. “The IDF affirms that the necessary actions will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed individuals, regardless of its type.”
Israel also continued to face criticism over the weekend for an attack that hit UN peacekeeping positions in south Lebanon.
The IDF has said its forces fired at a threat near a UNIFIL position and acknowledged that a “hit” was responsible for wounding two people. It said “soldiers operating in southern Lebanon identified an immediate threat against them. The soldiers responded with fire toward the threat.”
An initial probe indicated that during the incident, a UNIFIL post located approximately 50 meters (yards) from the source of the threat was hit.
US President Joe Biden said Israel “absolutely, positively” must stop firing at UN positions. US special envoy to Lebanon Amos Hochstein told Lebanese media Friday that the incident was “unacceptable.”
France, Italy and Spain also condemned the injuries and said such incidents were “unjustifiable” and should “immediately come to an end.”
“We recall that all peacekeepers must be protected and reiterate our praise for the continued and indispensable commitment of UNIFIL troops/personnel in this very challenging context,” it adds, as it called for “an immediate ceasefire.”
As Israel continued to press its campaign against Hezbollah, the terror group said Friday its priority was “to defeat the enemy and force them to stop the aggression” but that it was open to any efforts to stop “the aggression.”
“Tel Aviv is only the start, Israel has only seen so little,” the head of the terror group’s media office Mohammad Afif said.
Hochstein said Friday that the US was working “non-stop” toward a ceasefire in Lebanon. As Israel continues to target Hezbollah leadership and weapons stockpiles in Beirut, Hochstein said bombing in Beirut “needs to stop.”
“We don’t like this campaign of bombings in densely populated Beirut,” Hochstein said.
Israel’s bombing campaign in Beirut in recent weeks has eliminated the majority of Hezbollah’s leadership. Observers have noted that secondary explosions following many strikes on targets in the city appeared to confirm they were loaded with weaponry.
The Hezbollah spokesman, Afif, denied that there were weapons stored in Beirut’s southern suburbs. He also claimed the massive secondary explosions were caused by Israeli-timed bombs to make it seem so. He promised residents of the neighborhood and those displaced from southern Lebanon and Bekaa that they would return soon.
Friday saw a 27-year-old foreign worker from Thailand killed and another worker was wounded when unexploded ordnance blew up in an orchard by the northern community of Kibbutz Yir’on in the Upper Galilee.
Security officials were still investigating but said they believed the cause was a munition previously fired by Hezbollah. It was not clear whether the blast was caused by one of the victims handling or interacting with the weaponry in some way.
In Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes continued to target Hezbollah commanders, rocket launchers and other terror targets.
The IDF sent another brigade into southern Lebanon on Friday amid ground operations near the border, and said in a statement that the unit had already destroyed Hezbollah tunnels, defensive positions and other enemy infrastructure.
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.
Israel warned for long months that it would take action if a diplomatic solution was not found, and in recent weeks massively ramped up its strikes and launched a ground offensive to eliminate the Hezbollah threat from the border region.