Hezbollah claims to have fired over 200 rockets and 20 drones on Israel’s North, both in the Galilee and the Golan on Thursday.
In one of the most intense attacks by the Lebanese terror group of the war, it also fired on cities like Acre and Nahariya, which have generally been left off of its target list, beyond cities like Kiryat Shmona, which have been attacked almost non-stop.
Fires erupted from Hezbollah’s attacks in several areas, and there are reports of several injuries on the Israeli side, though some information still must clear Israel’s censor.
The attacks come in response to Israel’s assassination on Wednesday of the commander of the Aziz unit on the southern front of Hezbollah, Muhammad Neamah Naser. He was viewed as one of the two most senior commanders in Hezbollah killed to date during the nine-month war.
How did Nasser fit in?
Questioned about how killing Nasser fit into the strategy of trying to strike a ceasefire deal with both Hamas and Hezbollah, IDF sources said that until a ceasefire, they simply needed to proceed with striking significant Hezbollah targets to try to deter the group from continuing to fight Israel.
Pressed that to date, killing senior Hezbollah commanders has led to larger attacks from the group, not reductions, IDF sources agreed that this had been the case. They recognized that the exact balance of how to pressure Hezbollah using military force while also trying to negotiate a ceasefire was a very difficult proposition and was up to the political echelon.
Until the IDF killed Nasser, there had been a brief period of days of somewhat reduced attacks from Hezbollah following a couple of weeks of intense attacks earlier in June.
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