Hezbollah rockets target IDF intel base near Tel Aviv

Top Hezbollah man killed in Beirut strike as ground op expands in south Lebanon

Military says Jihad Council member and logistics chief Suhail Hussein Husseini eliminated; 4th IDF division moves into southwestern Lebanon; reservist seriously wounded

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

Flame and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Flame and smoke rise from an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Israel said on Tuesday it had killed another top Hezbollah official in a targeted strike on Beirut, as it moved to expand its ground offensive across southern Lebanon to the Mediterranean coast, sending a fourth division across the border.

The moves came as the military continued to strike dozens of Hezbollah positions and the terror group launched several salvos of rockets and missiles at Israel, including a midnight volley on the Tel Aviv area.

In a statement Tuesday, the IDF said Suhail Hussein Husseini, the head of Hezbollah’s logistical headquarters and a member of the Jihad Council, the terror group’s top military body, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut the previous day.

The IDF says Husseini’s command oversaw Hezbollah logistics and budgeting for its various units.

“Husseini played a crucial role in weapon transfers between Iran and Hezbollah and was responsible for distributing the advanced weaponry among Hezbollah’s units, overseeing both the transportation and allocation of these arms,” the IDF said.

Husseini’s death was the latest following a string of targeted strikes in recent weeks that has killed almost all of Hezbollah’s top leadership, including long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah.

Smoke rises from destroyed buildings at the site of an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah targets in Choueifat, southeast of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

The military said that Husseini was “responsible for the budgeting and logistical management of Hezbollah’s most sensitive projects, including the organization’s war plans and other special operations, such as coordinating terrorist attacks against Israel from Lebanon and Syria.”

The military said the headquarters also housed Hezbollah’s R&D, which is responsible for the manufacture of precision-guided missiles.

Ahead of some of the strikes in Beirut, the IDF issued warnings to residents near two buildings to evacuate immediately.

Also Tuesday, the IDF said a fourth division, its 146th Reserve Division, had moved into southern Lebanon late Monday as part of ground operations against the terror group, expanding the campaign to the western sector of southern Lebanon.

The reserve division joins three standing army divisions — the 98th, 36th, and 91st — already operating in the central and eastern sectors of southern Lebanon.

The move adds thousands of troops to Israel’s ground offensive, with the total number of soldiers deployed inside Lebanon now likely over 15,000.

The operations were launched by the division with its Carmeli Reserve Infantry Brigade and Iron Fist Reserve Armored Brigade, with support from its 213th Artillery Regiment, the military said.

Troops of the 146th Division prepare to enter southern Lebanon, October 7, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel’s ground operations in southern Lebanon have been described by the IDF as “limited, localized, and targeted raids,” with the goal of demolishing Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the border area, especially in the villages adjacent to Israel, to make it safe for displaced residents of the north of Israel to return home.

The army says Hezbollah had made preparations along the border for a major invasion of northern Israel in an October 7-style attack.

The IDF said Tuesday that a reservist with the Alexandroni Brigade’s 7012th Battalion was seriously hurt amid fighting in southern Lebanon during the previous day.

The deployment of the 146th came after the IDF earlier imposed a new closed military zone on the Israeli side of the border, in the areas of the communities of Rosh Hanikra, Shlomi, Hanita, Adamit and Arab al-Aramshe.

The order bars civilians from areas where the Israeli military is operating, including areas in Israel across the border from Lebanese villages where fighting may be taking place.

The army also warned Lebanese civilians against entering the sea or being on the beach in southern Lebanon, saying it would be targeting terror infrastructure along the coast.

This map issued by the IDF on October 7, 2024, shows a closed military zone on the Lebanon border. (Israel Defense Forces)

Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, issued an “urgent warning” on Monday to people on vacation, beachgoers, and anyone using boats for fishing or other uses south of the Awali River, which is north of Sidon.

He said the Israeli Navy would soon begin to operate against Hezbollah in the area.

The air force also carried out a massive wave of strikes across the border ahead of the latest ground force assault.

Some 100 Israeli fighter jets carried out a large wave of airstrikes against more than 120 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon on Monday afternoon. The IDF said the strikes, which lasted an hour, hit Hezbollah sites belonging to the terror group’s southern front, elite Radwan Force, rocket and missile division and intelligence division.

The IDF also provided details on its strikes on Beirut, saying that it had hit more than 100 Hezbollah sites in the Lebanese capital in the past two weeks, including weapon depots, weapon manufacturing plants and command centers.

Beyond targeting Hezbollah leaders in the Lebanese capital, the military said that in recent months it had identified Hezbollah moving weapons and manufacturing equipment from southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley to Beirut’s southern suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh.

The IDF believes Hezbollah moved the assets in an attempt to prevent Israel from targeting them, as until recently Israel had largely refrained from strikes in Beirut. Such strikes have now become a daily occurrence.

Regarding the Beirut strike, military sources issued a rare clarification that Israel had not deliberately tried to kill a top Iranian general, amid reports that he has been missing since last week.

Esmail Qaani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extraterritorial Quds Force, was not the target of an Israeli strike in Beirut, according to military sources.

The commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Esmail Qaani, speaks during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 2020 killing of Guards general Qasem Soleimani, in Tehran, Iran, on January 3, 2024. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

Two Iranian security officials told Reuters on Sunday that Qaani, who traveled to Lebanon after the assassination of Nasrallah, had not been heard from since strikes on Beirut’s southern suburb on Thursday. That day, the IDF carried out an airstrike in Dahiyeh, targeting top Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine. It remains unclear whether Safieddine was killed in the strike.

Military sources say that if Qaani was with Safieddine during the strike, the IDF had not been aware of this when it attacked.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah continued to fire barrages of rockets into Israel. It launched some 190 rockets at Israel from Lebanon on Monday, mostly targeting the north of the country, the IDF said.

It also launched a barrage of five long-range missiles at the Tel Aviv area just before midnight, sending tens of thousands of people into bomb shelters.

Some of the missiles were intercepted by air defenses, and the rest struck open land, according to the military.

Hezbollah took responsibility, claiming to have targeted the IDF’s Glilot Base near Tel Aviv.

The base is home to the IDF’s signals intelligence Unit 8200, and is adjacent to the Mossad headquarters.

Sirens sounded in central Israel three times Monday, following rocket fire from Gaza in the morning, a ballistic missile from Yemen in the afternoon, and the missiles from Lebanon.

The attacks came as Israel marked the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack.

On Monday, the military said two Israeli reservists serving on the northern border were killed in a mortar attack. Master Sgt. (res.) Etay Azulay, 25, from the West Bank border settlement of Oranit, and Warrant Officer (res.) Aviv Magen, 43, from the central town of Herut, were both on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon when a mortar impacted near their position Sunday evening, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Azulay was killed on the spot, while Magen died in a hospital on Monday morning. Both were members of the IDF’s elite 5515 combat mobility unit.

A third reservist with them at the time was seriously wounded.

The deaths bring the IDF’s toll since launching its ground operation in Lebanon to 11.

Master Sgt. (res.) Etay Azulay, killed on the Lebanon border on October 6, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Israel’s raids in southern Lebanon have focused on Hezbollah’s “centers of gravity” in southern Lebanon villages, where troops have so far found massive amounts of weapons, military sources said. Israel has said Hezbollah was planning a large-scale October 7-style attack on northern communities to massacre and kidnap Israeli civilians.

The IDF has said its operations in southern Lebanon will expand as needed, but that it still intends to end them as quickly as possible — within a few weeks.

The escalation followed Israel’s decision last month to make the return of northern residents to their homes an official war aim. Some 60,000 residents were evacuated from northern towns on the Lebanon border shortly after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, out of fear Hezbollah would carry out a similar attack.

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 against Hamas there.

The skirmishes resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, and — in addition to the 11 soldiers killed in the ground operation — the deaths of 22 IDF soldiers and reservists.

Two soldiers in northern Israel have been killed in a drone attack from Iraq, and there have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah has named 516 members — including Nasrallah — who have been killed by Israel during the war, mostly in Lebanon but also some in Syria. Another 94 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.

These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began its new offensive against Hezbollah in September, including the ground operation in which the military says at least 440 Hezbollah operatives have been killed.

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