In first, Hezbollah fires missile at Tel Aviv area; no injuries as IDF intercepts it

Hezbollah fired a surface-to-surface missile at Tel Aviv early Wednesday morning, setting off sirens in the city and surrounding area, the first time that the Lebanese terror group has gotten a rocket close to Israel’s central hub.

The IDF said it intercepted the missile using the David’s Sling defense system. There were no reports of injuries or damage. An hour later, the military said it had struck the Hezbollah launcher used to fire the missile, in southern Lebanon’s Nafakhiyeh.

Hezbollah claimed that it had targeted the Mossad headquarters near Herzliya, a town near Tel Aviv, with a “Qader 1” ballistic missile.

The terror group said the attack was a response to thousands of pager and walkie-talkie explosions among its ranks — widely attributed to but not officially claimed by Israel — and the recent assassinations of top commanders in the terror group in IDF airstrikes, as cross-border violence has dramatically escalated.

Though the missile set off sirens across a wide swath of cities and towns in central Israel, the Home Front Command said there were no changes in instructions for residents of the area, and that schools could operate as usual.

The attack on the Tel Aviv area came amid several days of intensive cross-border violence in the north. Hezbollah continued to fire barrages of rockets at Israel throughout Wednesday morning, including 40 rockets aimed at Safed, one of which directly hit a home in the city, causing major damage, but no injuries.

Israeli officials have stressed that fighting will continue until Hezbollah is deterred and tens of thousands of residents of the north who have been displaced for close to a year can return home. The IDF said Wednesday it was carrying out a “wide” wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, striking more than 100 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The IDF issued a message in Arabic early Wednesday morning to Lebanese civilians who had, as they had been urged to, evacuated their homes due to the presence of Hezbollah weapons, warning them it was not yet safe to go back.

“For your safety, do not return to your homes until further notice,” the message read, noting that the Israeli military was continuing to strike terror targets.

The IDF said it carried out another wave of strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon overnight, hitting Hezbollah operatives, dozens of weapon depots including those storing cruise missiles, launchers for precision missiles and other infrastructure.

The military noted that secondary blasts can be seen in footage following the strikes, “which indicate that many weapons were stored in the facilities.”

Hezbollah continued to fire rockets and drones into Israel late Tuesday and early Wednesday, triggering sirens in towns including Zichron Yaakov and Yokne’am.

The IDF said five rockets were launched Wednesday morning from Lebanon at the Carmel and Wadi Ara area in northern Israel, south of Haifa.

The military said some of the rockets were intercepted by air defenses, and at least one impact was reported. There were no reports of injuries in the attack.

Shortly afterward, the IDF said that Israeli fighter jets struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher in southern Lebanon’s Tebnine, used in the rocket barrage, and the military released footage of the strike.

Meanwhile a drone fired at the Atlit area south of Haifa late Tuesday — the furthest Hezbollah drone attack since the start of the war — caused slight damage and sparked a fire, the IDF said.

Hezbollah claimed to have launched several explosive-laden drones at the Israeli Navy’s Atlit base, which houses the Shayetet 13 commando unit. According to the IDF, three drones were launched in the attack, two of which were intercepted by air defenses.

“A fire broke out as a result of an impact in the area, minor damage was caused and the fire was extinguished,” the IDF said in a statement, adding that no injuries were caused.

Meanwhile, the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq fired a number of drones at Israel late Tuesday and early Wednesday, which were intercepted by the IDF.

One of the drones set off rare sirens overnight in the small town of Sapir along the border with Jordan in Israel’s southern Arava desert. The IDF said that the drone, which entered Israeli airspace from the eastern direction, impacted in the Arava without causing any injuries.

The Iran-backed group Islamic Resistance in Iraq took responsibility for the drone attack, saying it launched it at a “target” in the Jordan Valley.

Drone warnings also set off sirens in the Golan Heights overnight, with the same Iraqi group taking responsibility. The IDF later said that two drones from Iraq struck open areas in the northern Golan Heights, after setting off sirens in Ein Zivan and Merom Golan. The drone impacts sparked fires in open areas, but no injuries were caused.

Then on Wednesday morning, Israeli fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Israeli airspace south of the Sea of Galilee, the IDF said. Sirens had sounded in the Golan Heights community of Eliad amid the incident.

According to the military, the drone had flown toward Israel from the east, possibly launched from Iraq, and entered Israeli airspace from Syria. No damage or injuries were caused. The same Iraqi terror group claimed responsibility for the attack.

After more than 11 months of cross-border violence — beginning October 8, when Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel in support of its ally Hamas, one day after Hamas carried out a massacre in Israel — that avoided an all-out war, Israel and Hezbollah have stepped up fighting in recent days, with hundreds of rockets fired at Israel and intensive IDF airstrikes on Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, as well as the targeted assassinations of a number of the terror group’s leaders.

Hezbollah confirmed overnight that Ibrahim Qubaisi, the commander of the terror group’s rocket and missile division, was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on Tuesday.

The terror group announced Qubaisi’s death, along with another operative believed to have been killed alongside him. Hezbollah referred to Qubaisi as a commander. Hezbollah rarely refers to its senior operatives slain in Israeli strikes as commanders and has only done so four times previously.

Since Israel escalated its attacks on the terror group in recent days, Hezbollah has not named any of the operatives killed in the strikes, making the announcement of Qubaisi’s death an exception.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike in Beirut also killed Ibrahim Aqil, the head of Hezbollah’s military operations, the acting commander of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, and the head of a plan to invade the Galilee.

An Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Monday evening targeted Hezbollah commander Ali Karaki, although the terror group said he had survived the attempted assassination.

Israel’s offensive since Monday morning has killed 569 people, including 50 children, and wounded 1,835 in Lebanon, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad told Al Jazeera Mubasher TV. The figure does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. PJC

Agencies contributed to this report.