Israel kills Hezbollah drone chief in Beirut, rockets fly at north as truce rebuffed
IDF also hits bridge on Syria-Lebanon border, used by Lebanese terror group to smuggle arms; Beirut says nearly 2 dozen Syrians killed in strike
An airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah leader in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday afternoon, the military said, with fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group showing little sign of slowing as an international bid to secure a ceasefire appeared to fall apart.
The strike in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh targeted the head of Hezbollah’s aerial forces, Mohammed Srur, who is largely responsible for the terror group’s drone fleet along with cruise missiles and aerial defenses.
Lebanon’s health ministry said two people were killed in the attack. Hezbollah confirmed Srur’s death in a statement released early Friday.
According to the military, Srur directed and commanded numerous and various aerial attacks on Israel, including explosive-laden drones and cruise missiles.
In recent years, the IDF said, he led Hezbollah’s drone manufacturing, and established sites in Lebanon where the terror group would build explosive UAVs, some of which were under civilian buildings in Beirut.
Srur joined Hezbollah in the 1980s, and held various positions, including in the terror group’s air defenses, in the Aziz unit in the Radwan Force, and as Hezbollah’s attaché to Yemen where he was involved in the Houthis’ aerial forces, according to the military.
During the war he advanced numerous explosive drone attacks on Israel, as well as surveillance drones, the IDF said.
The attack marked at least the fourth time Israel has targeted the group’s top commanders in recent days, including a Tuesday strike on rocket and missile chief Ibrahim Qubaisi and a Friday attack on Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah’s military operations. Both were killed.
Following the assassination of Srur, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said the military must continue to strike the terror group.
“We need to continue attacking Hezbollah. We have been waiting for this opportunity for years,” Halevi said following an assessment, in remarks provided by the IDF, hinting that the military is against a ceasefire at this stage.
“We are constantly working to make achievements, to eliminate more senior officials, to thwart the transfer of weapons, to [destroy] Hezbollah’s firepower [capabilities], and to attack it in all of Lebanon,” he added.
Also Thursday, Israel said its warplanes targeted 220 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley throughout the day, and Hezbollah fired over 175 rockets at northern Israeli cities.
More documentation from the area of the attack in Beirut, Lebanon. https://t.co/tIUXWFkjnG pic.twitter.com/SGGnb6QB1b
— GeoInsider (@InsiderGeo) September 26, 2024
A volley of some 45 rockets toward the coastal Israeli city of Acre Thursday morning ended a rare 19-hour lull in Hezbollah fire at northern Israel that had briefly bolstered hopes for an internationally brokered halt to the fighting.
The IDF said several of the rockets were intercepted and the rest landed in open areas. Videos showed some projectiles splashing into the Mediterranean Sea.
תיעוד יוצא דופן: 25 רקטות שוגרו לעכו, נפילה אחר נפילה בים במהלך המטח @_Gitsis_
צילום: לפי חוק 27א' pic.twitter.com/yP4u1BW6On
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) September 26, 2024
Another 10 rockets were fired at Kiryat Shmona a short time later, the IDF said, and Hezbollah claimed it fired volleys of Falaq-2s at the city. A single rocket launched toward Safed around the same time was swatted down by air defenses, the army said.
Another 85 rockets were launched at the Safed and Mount Meron area in the afternoon hours, causing no injuries.
In the evening, 25 more rockets were fired at the Lower Galilee. The IDF said the rockets all hit open areas, but one person, a 45-year-old man, was moderately wounded by shrapnel, according to medics.
Earlier, Lebanese officials said an overnight Israeli airstrike on a building housing Syrian workers and their families killed up to 23 people near Baalbek on the Lebanon-Syria border, marking one of the deadliest single strikes reported in the intensified air campaign against the Hezbollah terror group.
Ali Qusas, the mayor of Younine, said most of the dead in the strike on a three-story building in the town were women and children. Lebanon is home to around 1.5 million Syrians who fled civil war there, though thousands of Lebanese have fled to Syria in recent days.
There was no comment on the strike from Israel, which said it hit around 75 Hezbollah targets overnight in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold near the Syrian frontier.
The targets included terrorists, military buildings, and weapons depots, the army said, publishing footage of the strikes.
מטוסי קרב של חיל האוויר, בהכוונת אגף המודיעין ופיקוד הצפון, תקפו במהלך הלילה כ-75 מטרות טרור של חיזבאללה במרחב הבקעא ובדרום לבנון, בהם מחסני אמצעי לחימה, משגרים מוכנים לשיגור לעורף ישראל, מבנים צבאיים, מחבלים ותשתיות צבאיות של הארגון>> pic.twitter.com/Hj1VaI1eLy
— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) September 26, 2024
The Israeli Air Force later on Thursday carried out a strike on the Lebanese-Syria border, targeting infrastructure that the IDF said was used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons. The military said the weapons smuggled into Lebanon from Syria have been used against Israel.
Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters that the strike hit the Syrian end of a small bridge that provides a crossing into Lebanon. Hamieh said he did not immediately know whether the crossing was still usable.
Israel says it takes pains to avoid civilian casualties, warning Lebanese to leave areas where Hezbollah could be housing weapons before launching its intensified campaign on Monday, which largely targeted residential buildings.
The IDF has accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields by hiding missiles and other weapons in homes.
On Wednesday, it published before-and-after images of homes it had struck in recent days in the villages of Maifadoun, Houmayri, Baraachit and Tayr Debba, which it said showed evidence that Hezbollah had stored munitions and rocket launchers inside them.
Following a report that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the army to pare back its attacks as international efforts to secure a ceasefire took shape, his office issued a denial, saying fighting there and in Gaza was continuing at full force.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz later said Israel would not be halting its offensive, amid widespread opposition in Israel to a ceasefire that critics said would allow Hezbollah to regroup while keeping Israel’s north under constant threat.
On Wednesday, IDF chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Northern Command head Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin told troops to prepare for a possible ground invasion, hours after Hezbollah fired a long-range missile at Tel Aviv for the first time.
“Your military boots will enter enemy territory, enter villages that Hezbollah has prepared as large military outposts, with underground infrastructure, staging points, and launchpads into our territory [from which Hezbollah intends] to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians,” Halevi said.
The army also said Wednesday afternoon that it was calling up two reserve brigades to be deployed to northern Israel.
Israel says it has carried out sorties against over 2,000 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon since Monday, aiming to halt nearly a year of rocket attacks on northern Israel that the group began launching on October 8 in support of Hamas.
Hezbollah says at least 512 of its fighters have been killed since fighting began on October 8. The IDF believes this toll to be much higher.
Over 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since Monday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
