From the Liveblog of
Thursday, April 9, 2026
Hailing IDF attacks, Netanyahu vows Israel ‘will continue to strike Hezbollah wherever necessary’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleNava Freiberg is The Times of Israel's deputy diplomatic correspondent.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel “will continue to strike Hezbollah wherever necessary” after the IDF announced it had assassinated Ali Yusuf Harshi, the secretary of Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem.
“Our message is clear: whoever acts against Israeli civilians will be targeted. We will continue to strike Hezbollah wherever necessary, until we restore full security to the residents of the north,” Netanyahu writes in a Hebrew-language post on X.
In addition to assassinating Harashi, “the IDF struck a series of terror infrastructures in southern Lebanon: crossing points used to transfer thousands of weapons, rockets and launchers, as well as weapons depots, launch sites, and Hezbollah command centers,” Netanyahu adds, sharing IDF footage of the attacks.
“We continue to strike Hezbollah with force, precision, and determination,” he says.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has continued since the US reached a two-week ceasefire agreement on Tuesday with Iran, the terror group’s patron. Washington, Tehran, Jerusalem, and mediating countries have presented conflicting claims on whether the ceasefire applies to fighting with the Hezbollah terror group.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for launching rockets overnight at northern Israel in its first attacks since the ceasefire began, saying it came in response to large Israeli strikes on Lebanon yesterday, which it described as violations of the truce.
The Times of Israel Community.