An Israel Defense Forces drone strike on a vehicle near the Southern Lebanese village of Jouaiyya on Wednesday killed Hassan Fares Jeshi, a commander in Hezbollah’s anti-tank missile unit, the army said.
The strike came shortly after Hezbollah terrorists targeted Moshav Shtula in the Upper Galilee with rockets.
According to the Israeli military, at least five projectiles were fired as part of the barrage, all of which exploded inside Lebanon.
Israeli fighter planes subsequently broke the sound barrier over Southern Lebanon and Beirut, Lebanese sources reported.
In the hours following the targeted attack on the Hezbollah commander, the Iran-backed terrorist group launched several barrages of drones and rockets towards Israeli population centers, including the city of Safed.
No casualties were reported from the barrages, which brought the total number of confirmed Hezbollah attacks throughout the day to seven.
Earlier on Wednesday, air-raid sirens sounded in the Western Galilee border town of Shlomi, with Hezbollah claiming in a statement that it targeted a military site in the area, “scoring direct hits.”
Hezbollah has attacked the Jewish state nearly every day since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at Israel, killing more than 40 people and causing widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the ongoing violence.
Nineteen Israelis were wounded on Tuesday afternoon, including one critically, when Hezbollah launched suicide drones towards the Galilee.
Late Tuesday night, Golani Infantry Brigade soldiers ordered an Israeli Air Force strike on a structure in Yaroun, Southern Lebanon, after they confirmed the presence of Hezbollah terrorists, the military said.
IAF fighter jets also attacked Hezbollah “military” infrastructure in Kfarkela (Kfar Kela), located just across the border from the Eastern Galilee.
Addressing the memorial ceremony for his No. 2 man, Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed on Tuesday that Iran, Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis would respond jointly to the killings of Shukr and top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on July 31 by a planted bomb that has been attributed to Israel.
“The enemy is waiting in a state of loss and anxiety,” claimed the top terrorist leader, adding that the waiting “is part of the punishment.”
“Our response is coming, Inshallah [‘God willing’], alone or with the Axis of Resistance, regardless of the ramifications,” vowed Nasrallah.
Shukr was a top terrorist commander responsible for a rocket barrage that killed 12 children in a Druze village in the Israeli Golan Heights on July 27, as well as a 1983 bombing that killed 241 American service personnel in Beirut. He was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Lebanese capital on July 30.
