Israeli Air Force jets attacked Hezbollah terrorist targets in Southern Lebanon on Thursday in response to ongoing rocket fire towards the Upper Galilee, the Israel Defense Forces said.
IAF airstrikes targeted terrorist infrastructure in Naqoura on Lebanon’s southern coast, as well as in the village of Yaroun, adjacent to the Israeli community of Dovev in the Upper Galilee.
The military said troops also removed a “threat” in the area of Wadi Hamul, using artillery fire.
Earlier on Thursday, the air force struck Hezbollah assets in the southern town of Kunin, according to the IDF.
The airstrikes came as air-raid sirens were reported in the Upper Galilee farming community of Malkia. Hezbollah subsequently announced that it targeted “enemy soldiers” inside the kibbutz with artillery shells.
Israeli forces on Thursday also intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” in the area of Kfar Blum, located some four miles from Lebanese territory, per Army Radio.
The news came mere minutes before Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived as part of a tour of the area. The head of state told the kibbutz’s residents, including evacuees from Manara and Gadot relocated to Kfar Blum, that he had come to support them “on behalf of the entire country.”
“There is a deep feeling of being ignored and neglected; people ‘up there’ don’t hear the tremendous pain that exists here,” said Herzog, telling residents: “It is important for us to be deserving of you.”
The Israeli government has repeatedly promised that the approximately 80,000 citizens who live up to 5.5 miles from the northern border will not be asked to return home “until security is established” and Hezbollah is pushed back further into Lebanon.
Since the start of the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip five months ago, the IDF has struck some 4,500 targets linked to the Iran-backed terror group, the military spokesperson’s unit announced earlier this week.
Since the beginning of the war, the IDF has eliminated 300-plus terrorists in the north and wounded more than 750, according to the military, including five senior Hezbollah commanders, and dozens of terrorist cells that directed or fired anti-tank missiles and rockets.
Hezbollah has killed six civilians—five Israelis and an Indian worker—and 10 soldiers since it began its attacks in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, the day after the murder of 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas operatives and Palestinians who infiltrated the Gaza border, and who took roughly 250 men, women and children hostages back—many of whom are still languishing there.
Hezbollah’s attacks are pushing Jerusalem towards a “critical point” in its decision-making process regarding a possible military operation in Southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told White House envoy Amos Hochstein during a meeting earlier this month in Tel Aviv.