An anti-tank missile launched from Lebanon struck a plantation in Margaliot, a moshav in the Galilee panhandle, at around 11 a.m. on Monday. One man was killed and nine others wounded, two of them seriously.
The casualty was later identified as Nibin Maxwell, a 31-year-old foreign worker from Kerala, India, according to The Hindu.
The wounded, workers from India and Thailand in their 30s, were evacuated by helicopter to various hospitals. All suffered shrapnel wounds, Magen David Adom reported.
“Two injured foreign workers were brought to us after they were hit by anti-tank fire in an agricultural area where they were working,” said MDA paramedic Eli Assoulin, who described one of them as being lightly injured and another “in serious condition, fully conscious and suffering from severe facial injuries and shrapnel throughout his body.”
The more seriously wounded man was given medical treatment before being put on a helicopter to Rabin Medical Center, formerly Beilinson, in Petach Tikvah.
Simultaneously with the attack, alarms sounded in in a number of settlements in the Upper Galilee warning of the possible infiltration of a hostile aircraft.
Following the attack, IDF jets hit a series of Hezbollah targets in the areas of Bint Jbeil, Sultaniyeh and Seddiqine. Among the targets struck were Hezbollah military structures and a military command and control center used by the terrorist organization, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The attack took place only hours before U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein was expected in Beirut as part of a U.S.-led diplomatic effort to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The Iranian proxy group has been launching attacks on Israel on a near daily basis since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Israel has threatened a full-scale invasion to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River if a diplomatic solution is not found. So far, U.S. efforts have not been successful in calming tensions.
Fourteen northern Israeli communities have been evacuated to give the IDF freedom of movement, displacing some 80,000 Israelis from the region.
Last Tuesday, Hezbollah fired a “significant” rocket barrage at northern Israel, claiming the attack was a response to an Israeli strike the previous day in the Beqaa Valley which killed a senior Hezbollah commander.
According to Hezbollah, the barrage targeted the Israeli Air Force’s air control base on Mount Meron, which has been attacked multiple times since Hezbollah joined the war in support of Hamas.
