IDF strikes Lebanon after Hezbollah rocket fire, reportedly targets Syria’s Aleppo

‘Widespread’ strikes target Hezbollah stronghold of Kafr Kila, as well as Bint Jbeil and Marwahin; northern resident lightly injured after anti-tank missile near miss

By Emanuel Fabian
and Agencies 30 December 2023, 10:40 pm Edit
Smoke billows after Israeli bombardment over Lebanon's southern town of Kafr Kila near the border with Israel on December 30, 2023, amid ongoing cross-border skirmishes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza continues. (AFP)
Smoke billows after Israeli bombardment over Lebanon's southern town of Kafr Kila near the border with Israel on December 30, 2023, amid ongoing cross-border skirmishes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza continues. (AFP)

The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday it carried out “widespread” strikes on Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon as the Iran-backed terror group continued to attack communities in northern Israel with rockets and drones.

According to the IDF, strikes were carried out in two waves on a series of sites belonging to the terror group in Kafr Kila on Saturday morning and afternoon.

The IDF said Kafr Kila is a Hezbollah stronghold, where the terror group “uses the infrastructure in the area for terror purposes, exploiting the civilian population and using it as a human shield for its operations.”

Many rocket and missile attacks against Israel have been carried out from the village, according to the military.

The IDF said a fighter jet and other aircraft also struck three terror cells in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

The IDF also hit targets in Bint Jbeil and Marwahin in southern Lebanon, footage released by the army showed.

The strikes came in response to Hezbollah rocket, missile, and drone attacks on northern Israel.

In one of the incidents Saturday, an anti-tank missile narrowly missed a vehicle in the Upper Galilee.

A 65-year-old man was lightly injured by the blast, but did not require hospitalization, according to Hebrew-language media reports.

Two explosive-laden drones launched from Lebanon hit open areas in the Mount Dov region on the Lebanon border, while another “suspicious aerial target” that entered Israeli airspace was downed by air defenses.

Meanwhile, an alleged Israeli airstrike was reported in northern Syria’s Aleppo.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, citing a military source, said “material losses” were caused in the alleged Israeli airstrike on Aleppo.

It said the Israeli fighter jets launched their missiles from over the Mediterranean Sea, west of Latakia, hitting several sites in Aleppo.

The report did not elaborate on the sites that were hit, but other media outlets in Syria said sites in the vicinity of Aleppo International Airport were targeted in the strike.

According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, munition warehouses belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force were targeted.

Israel has for years carried out aerial attacks on Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it began supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad in a civil war that started in 2011. Israel rarely comments on these individual strikes, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran to expand its presence there.

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the Lebanese border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in four civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of nine IDF soldiers. There have also been several rocket attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah has named 133 members killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 19 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 19 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Saturday many of Hezbollah’s rockets fired at Israel have fallen short in Lebanon, including around 80 percent of the projectiles Friday.

“We are continuing to attack and damage Hezbollah’s deployment in southern Lebanon. The area of ​​southern Lebanon will never be the same again,” Hagari said in an evening press conference.

“Throughout the day, several launches from Lebanon into Israel were detected. Many of Hezbollah’s launches fall in Lebanese territory. Eighty percent of Hezbollah’s rockets yesterday fell in Lebanese territory,” he said.

Hagari added that Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah “is harming the state of Lebanon and endangering its future for the sake of his friends in Hamas, and his patron in Iran.”

In his weekly press briefing Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed he was committed to restoring security along the northern border, so residents who were evacuated from there can return home.

He also declared, “If Hezbollah widens the fighting, it will absorb strikes it never dreamed of. And so, too, Iran.”

“We will fight by all means until we have restored security for the residents of the north.”

During a phone call Friday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said he stressed that Hezbollah must be distanced from the border.

“The State of Israel cannot reconcile with such [a] threat, and Germany together with the international community have an important role to play in ensuring such [a] threat is removed,” Gantz wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He said the two also “discussed the growing threat the Iranian-led Axis of Terror poses to global stability, particularly in the Red Sea and other places around the world.”

Jerusalem has expressed openness to a diplomatic solution to the violence in the north, but has increasingly warned that if the international community does not push Hezbollah — which, like Hamas, is sworn to Israel’s destruction — away from the border through diplomatic means, it will take action.

The US has been working to keep the Gaza war from spreading and has warned both Hezbollah and Iran against escalation.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, called for the removal of armed personnel south of Lebanon’s Litani River, except for UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping mission, and the Lebanese army and state security forces. But the Iran-backed Hezbollah has entrenched itself for decades across much of southern Lebanon, where it enjoys strong support and has regularly launched rockets against Israel, while Beirut does nothing to rein in the group.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

Most Popular
read more: