Israeli jets set off sonic booms in Beirut as Nasrallah threatens ‘strong’ reprisal
Sirens ring out in northern communities and residents told to stay near shelters; terror group leader says Hezbollah, Iran ‘obligated’ to respond to killings of Shukr, Haniyeh
Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut just ahead of a pugnacious speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday afternoon, as northern residents were told to stay close to bomb shelters amid a series of cross-border attacks from Lebanon.
Several local authorities, including the northern city of Nahariya, issued the warnings, despite no such directive having been issued by the IDF Home Front Command, and gave the all-clear a short while later.
Local authorities have regularly issued their own recommendations to civilians amid near-daily cross-border attacks from Hezbollah since October 8. The Iran-backed group has vowed retaliation for Israel’s killing of its commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut last week, prompting worries of a major escalation that could tip into a full-blown war.
At the beginning of his televised address on Tuesday to mark the one-week anniversary of Shukr’s death, Nasrallah charged that the sonic booms set off by Israeli planes flying low over Beirut were intended as a provocation that he brushed off as “petty.”
The loud booms sent residents rushing to open their windows to prevent the glass from shattering or standing on their balconies to get a glimpse of the planes flying over. There was no comment from the IDF.
The Hezbollah leader said that his terror group cannot be expected to react to Shukr’s assassination the same way it has reacted to other killings in the past months.
Breaking
Loudest sonic boom I have ever heard in the past few weeks over Beirut. Jets were right above us in downtown Beirut
This is what we saw pic.twitter.com/rkMU4umbG6
— Nafiseh Kohnavard (@nafisehkBBC) August 6, 2024
“We have not sought escalations until now, we have been fighting in support of Gaza but keeping in mind the Lebanese national interest,” Nasrallah said. “Every time one of our commanders was killed, our response was heightened but always measured.
“But an assassination of a top leader in the Dahia [Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut] must be treated differently,” he added.“Our response is coming, God willing, from us and the axis of resistance — and it will be strong.”
Rocket and drone alert sirens rang out in northern communities near the Lebanon border multiple times on Tuesday afternoon, though a Hezbollah source told Reuters that “the response to the assassination of commander Fuad Shukr has not yet come.”
The strike that killed the Hezbollah commander last week marked the second time Israel struck the southern suburbs of Beirut in 10 months of hostilities. The Iran-backed group says its attacks are in support of Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas.
The strike came a few hours before Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in Iran, prompting the Islamic Republic to vow to “punish” Israel for both assassinations.
Israel took responsibility for Shukr’s killing but has not commented on Haniyeh’s death, other than to say that it had not carried out any other airstrikes in the Middle East that night. Some foreign reports have said Mossad killed Haniyeh by planting a bomb in the room he was staying in at a Tehran guesthouse.
With Israelis bracing for a coordinated attack and American diplomats furiously scrambling in hopes of curtailing the fallout from an expected reprisal by Iran and its proxies, Nasrallah said that Jerusalem was right to be afraid of an attack from Tehran and its “axis of resistance.”
He called on Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen to keep supporting Gaza despite the “difficulties and the sacrifices,” and urged other Arab countries to “wake up to the danger that threatens the region.”
“The Israeli danger cannot be faced by burying our heads in the sand, because the enemy has no red lines,” he said while maintaining that Iran was “obligated” to join the battle and respond to “whatever the consequences” after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Iran “finds itself obligated to respond, and the enemy is waiting in a great state of dread,” Nasrallah said, adding that Hezbollah would respond alone or in the context of a unified response from all of the Iran-backed groups in the region.
He also said that the uncertainty regarding the timing of the response constituted “part of the punishment” for Israel. He charged that the IDF was no longer the invincible power that beat the greatest Arab armies in past wars, as today it has to rely on the support of other countries to defend itself.
In April, a massive drone and missile attack from Iran was foiled by a coalition that reportedly comprised Israel, the US, Britain, France, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The IDF said that Hezbollah launched more than 30 rockets at northern Israel on Tuesday evening, directly after Nasrallah’s speech.
All of the rockets fired in the first barrage of some 20 rockets, aimed at the northern Golan Heights, struck open areas, according to the IDF. A short while later, another 10 rockets were fired at the Galilee Panhandle. The IDF said that some of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome and that several impacts were reported, some of which sparked fires.
There were no injuries reported in the attacks, which came after 19 people were injured earlier in the day, one of them critically, in a Hezbollah drone attack on the Western Galilee.
The IDF also said that a Hezbollah weapons depot in southern Lebanon’s Kafr Kila, where several operatives were spotted entering, was struck by fighter jets earlier on Tuesday.
כוח צה״ל מיחידה 869 זיהה מוקדם יותר היום חוליית מחבלים נכנסים למחסן אמל״ח ומבנה צבאי של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה במרחב הכפר כילא שבדרום לבנון.
בסגירת מעגל מהאוויר, מטוסי הקרב של חיל האוויר תקפו את המבנה ומחסן אמצעי הלחימה בהם פעלו המחבלים>> pic.twitter.com/pwtKaRXkjH— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) August 6, 2024
In a separate incident, the IDF said it carried out a drone strike against a Hezbollah cell leaving a rocket launching site used in an attack Tuesday morning on Misgav Am.
Other buildings used by Hezbollah in Ayta ash-Shab, and a rocket launcher in Abu Shash, were targeted in additional strikes, the IDF added.
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.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 25 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 18 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 399 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 70 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have been killed.
