Hezbollah fires 200 rockets and drones

[Pelican Press 0]

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Hezbollah fires 200 rockets and drones

The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has launched more than 200 rockets and ******* drones into northern *******, in response to the ******** of one of its senior commanders.

*******’s military said one of its officers was ******* in the barrage, which started a number of fires.

The military also said it had targeted Hezbollah “military structures” and other targets in southern Lebanon in response.

Lebanese media reported that one person was ******* in an ******** drone strike in the town of Houla.

The latest barrage, which followed one comprising 100 rockets on Wednesday afternoon, was one of the biggest so far in the nine months of cross-border ********* which have raised fears of an all-out war.

The Hezbollah commander ******* in an ******** air strike near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, Mohammed Nimah Nasser, was one of the most senior figures in the group to have been ******* in the conflict.

The ******** military said Nasser commanded Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit, which is responsible for launching rockets from south-western Lebanon, and accused him of directing a “large number of ******* attacks”.

It also described him as “the counterpart” of Taleb Sami Abdullah, the commander of another unit whose ******** last month prompted Hezbollah to launch more than 200 rockets and missiles into northern ******* in a single day.

There have been almost daily exchanges of ***** across the *******-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the war between ******* and ****** in Gaza on 7 October.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the ************ group that is also backed by Iran. Both groups are proscribed as ********** organisations by *******, the *** and other countries.

So far, more than 400 people have been reported ******* in Lebanon, the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters, and 25 people in *******, mostly soldiers.

The hostilities have also displaced tens of thousands of people from border communities in northern ******* and southern Lebanon.

“The response to the ************** of the dear leader Hajj Abu Nimah [Nasser]… started last night and quickly,” senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine warned at Nasser’s ******** in Beirut on Thursday.

“This series will continue to target new sites that the ****** did not imagine would be hit.”

******** government spokesman David Mencer said its military was “countering this Hezbollah aggression”.

“We will use all and every means necessary to restore security to our northern border,” he told a briefing.

A spokeswoman for the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, Unifil, said the exchanges were now extending deeper into both sides of the border, and called on both ******* and Hezbollah to show restraint.

“We’re very concerned… because any exchange, any incident, can escalate into something greater if there is a misunderstanding,” Kandice Ardiel told the BBC.

There has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions in recent weeks, with the UN and US warning of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a war that could also draw in Iran and other allied groups.

******** officials have repeatedly warned that they are ready for a war if diplomacy fails. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that the military would soon be ready to “take any action required in Lebanon, or to reach an arrangement from a position of strength”.

Hezbollah, which is seen as a significantly superior foe to ******, has said it does not want a full-out war with ******* and that it will observe in Lebanon any ceasefire between ******* and ****** in Gaza. But it has also warned ******* that it would ****** “without rules” if there was a war.

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