Nahariya man dies 10 days after being struck by shrapnel in Hezbollah rocket attack

A man gravely injured in a Hezbollah rocket attack more than 10 days ago died of his wounds on Sunday, as the Lebanese terror group launched dozens of fresh projectiles into Israel but failed to cause any casualties or major damage.

Eduard Sololov, a 57-year-old father of four from Nahariya, suffered critical injuries on October 23 when he was struck in the head by falling shrapnel during a large rocket attack on the northern coastal city.

Some 25 rockets were launched at Nahariya during the attack, which occurred on the eve of the Simhat Torah holiday, with most of them being intercepted by air defenses, the Israel Defense Forces said at the time.

Sololov, a fisherman, had been on a city pier when the attack took place and was unable to reach a shelter in time, his brother-in-law Arthur Kurginyan told the Ynet news site.

He was brought to the Galilee Medical Center in very serious condition “suffering from shrapnel in his head,” the hospital said in a statement Sunday.

He succumbed to his wounds following 11 days in a coma in intensive care, despite undergoing a series of surgeries, according to the medical center.

With his death, Sololov became the 40th civilian to be killed in Israel from Hezbollah fire since the Iran-backed group began launching rockets, missiles and drones at Israel over a year ago in support of the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

Another 61 IDF soldiers and reservists have been killed in drone and rocket attacks as well as in cross-border skirmishes and fighting inside Lebanon, where troops are engaged in a limited ground incursion near the frontier.

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The Lebanese group ramped up its attacks starting in September after the IDF began a punishing offensive aimed at ending the attacks and pushing Hezbollah operatives away from Lebanon’s de facto border with Israel, with the goal of allowing the return of some 60,000 residents forced to flee towns near the border.

Sunday was no exception, with more than 100 rockets and a handful of drones lobbed at Israel, setting off sirens throughout the day in the north. Alarms were also triggered Sunday morning by two rockets fired at areas south of Haifa, the IDF said.

Despite the volume of bombardments, most rockets were successfully shot down, while others fell largely harmlessly in uninhabited areas, authorities said. There were no reports of injuries or damage in any of the attacks.

Haifa, a key industrial port on the Mediterranean, and its suburbs, were among the locations to come under attack Sunday, along with parts of the Golan Heights. There were also fresh attacks on Nahariya, the nearby city of Acre and other areas, including one rocket volley which forced mourners at a funeral for a soldier killed in Gaza to scramble for cover among headstones in a city cemetery.

After nightfall, a pair of drones fired from Lebanon set off alarms near Haifa and in several cities to the south of the key port. According to the military, one was shot down, while the other crashed into a field near a highway in the Wadi Ara region, sparking brushfires.

The army has struggled in recent weeks to fend off drone attacks, with some UAVs managing to evade both air defenses and early warning radar. On Saturday, 11 people were injured when a drone hit a building in the central Israeli city of Tira.

Baalbek bombed again

In Lebanon, the country’s health ministry said three people were killed and nine others wounded in an Israeli strike on Haret Saida, a densely populated area near the southern city of Sidon.

“The Israeli enemy’s raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial death toll of three people killed and nine others injured,” the ministry said.

Another Israeli strike hit the town of Ghaziyeh, south of Sidon, the official National News Agency said.

Several Israeli strikes also hit near a governmental hospital in Tebnin, a town in the south Lebanon district of Bint Jbeil, possibly knocking it out of service, an official said.

There were no evacuation warnings ahead of any of those strikes, though the army did issue a fresh warning to residents of the eastern part of Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in northeast Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. NNA later reported several raids on Baalbek city and its surroundings, including one that destroyed a restaurant and caused some windows at a nearby hospital to break.

Abu Toufiq, a juice vendor in the area, said he fled after Israel issued the warning.

“When I came back, I found everything destroyed,” he told AFP, referring to his small shop near the restaurant.

Outside the southern Lebanese town of Khiam, which has been the locus of intensive ground fighting in recent days, the Lebanese Red Cross said it pulled five bodies out of rubble following a strike on a building there last week. It said 15 more bodies are believed to be beneath the wreckage.

There was no comment from the IDF on the specific strikes. However, the army said a recent drone strike in Khiam had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s forces in the city.

According to the IDF, Farouq Amin al-Ashi was responsible for numerous rocket and missile attacks from the village on Israeli towns in the Galilee Panhandle, especially Metula.

A separate strike in Khiam killed a company commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, the IDF added.

The IDF estimates that some 3,000 Hezbollah operatives have been killed in the conflict. Around 100 members of other terror groups, along with hundreds of civilians, have also been reported killed in Lebanon.

The IDF also released undated footage of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit raiding a Hezbollah site in southern Lebanon that had allegedly been slated to be used to plan and carry out infiltration attacks against Israel, as well as other attacks.

The military said special forces troops battled and killed Hezbollah operatives in a tunnel at the compound. Inside, soldiers found arms caches being stored in bunkers, including assault rifles, explosive devices, anti-tank missiles, surface-to-air missiles, mortars and other equipment, the IDF said. The entire compound, which also housed rocket launchers, was later demolished, according to the IDF.

Gone fishing

A funeral for Sololov was set for Monday afternoon in Nahariya, which has seen near-daily attacks since fighting escalated several weeks ago.

According to his brother-in-law Kurginyan, Sololov had lived in Nahariya since 1990, working for years at the Soglowek meat processor in the city. After getting injured on the job, he became a fisherman, frequenting the pier and even jumping in the water two years ago to rescue two kids who had fallen into the sea.

“All of Nahariya knew him,” Kurginyan said. “He would teach kids how to catch fish, how to tie hooks.”