The IDF carried out 200 airstrikes against Hezbollah targets across Lebanon over the last 24 hours while also maintaining four divisions, destroying the terror group’s south Lebanon infrastructure, they announced on Sunday. However, it still failed to substantially reduce rocket fire on the home front.
Over Yom Kippur, Hezbollah pounded Israel with over 150 rockets, sending one million Israelis into safe rooms and bomb shelters.
Hezbollah also succeeded at striking a residential area in Herzliya with a drone.
While no one was killed by the Hezbollah rockets, three people were wounded, and two weeks into the IDF’s invasion of southern Lebanon, there were no signs that the added military pressure alone would dramatically reduce the rocket fire.
Moreover, when The Jerusalem Post was in southern Lebanon on Thursday speaking to senior IDF officials, they did not describe significantly reducing the rocket fire as part of their mission, but rather, their mission was almost exclusively to eliminate Hezbollah’s ability to invade northern Israel with Radwan ground troops.
Other IDF sources have indicated that Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has been reduced by about 50-70%. However, considering that its pre-war arsenal consisted of around 150,000 rockets, there is no reason why it could not sustain a daily rocket fire of 50-200 rockets indefinitely, as it has been doing recently.
IDF continues its fight against Hezbollah
In addition, the IDF has hit many of Hezbollah’s “valuable” targets, having killed its three-level commanders already, such that Sunday’s description of targets was more of a generic list of striking rockets cells, anti-tank cells, and rank and filed Hezbollah fighters.
In Gaza, the IDF attacked 40 Hamas targets and killed dozens of terrorists in the last 24 hours.
Division 162 continued to destroy Hamas weapons, grenades, and mines in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where it started an operation – the fourth invasion of that area – last week.
Furthermore, the IDF said that it destroyed the rocket firing cell, which had fired two rockets at Ashkelon on Yom Kippur.
The IDF has not confirmed whether it is implementing a plan proposed by Brig. Gen. Giora Eiland and hundreds of mid-level reservist officers to evacuate all Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza and completely isolate Hamas from that area. However, it appears that in practice, the IDF has been carrying out this policy to a substantial extent.
Though numbers are still rough, it is already possible that a majority of the 150,000-250,000 Palestinian civilians who were in northern Gaza last week have already been moved to southern or central Gaza.
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