Four soldiers killed, seven seriously hurt in Hezbollah drone strike on military base
58 soldiers wounded as UAV crashes into dining hall at training base in central Israel; IDF investigating how projectile breached Israeli airspace without detection.
(THE TIMES OF ISRAEL) Four IDF soldiers were killed and 58 others were wounded by a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base near Binyamina in central Israel on Sunday night.
The attack was claimed by Hezbollah, which said that it had targeted a training base belonging to the IDF’s Golani Brigade with a “swarm of drones.” The Lebanese terror group touted the deadly attack as proof of its ability to strike Israel even as the military forges ahead with its ground operation against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
The drone impacted shortly before 7 p.m., the IDF said. Hebrew media reports indicated that it struck a dining hall inside the base.
The names of the four soldiers killed in the attack were not immediately cleared for publication. Seven more soldiers were seriously wounded, the IDF said, and another 14 were suffering from moderate injuries.
In a statement shortly after midnight, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that the circumstances surrounding the incident were being examined, as the drone had failed to set off any warning sirens in Israel.
“The IDF has full operational control over the incident,” Hagari said, urging the public to refrain from spreading rumors about the attack while the facts were still being established. “We will investigate how a UAV can breach without warning and hit a base,” he said. He added that Israel has faced the threat posed by UAVs “since the beginning of the war.”
“We are required to provide better protection,” he said. “We will investigate this incident, learn from it and improve.”
An initial probe into the attack indicated that two drones launched by Hezbollah entered Israeli airspace from the sea, the Times of Israel learned. Both were “Mirsad” drones, known in Iran as the Ababil-T. The model is Hezbollah’s main suicide drone, and their use was not unique or unprecedented.
According to the Alma Center, an Israeli research institute focused on security challenges in the north, the drone has “a 120-kilometer assault range, a top speed of 370 kilometers per hour, the capacity to carry up to 40 kilograms of explosives, and the ability to fly at altitudes of up to 3,000 meters.”
Both were tracked by Israeli radars, and one was shot down off the coast north of Haifa. Sirens sounded in the western Galilee area.
IAF planes and helicopters pursued the second drone, but it dropped off the radar and Israeli forces lost track of it, likely because it flew very close to the ground. No siren sounded because the assumption was that it had crashed or been intercepted once it disappeared.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said that it had coordinated with IDF medical teams to provide the injured with treatment at the scene of the strike before transferring them to hospitals around the country.
Most of the injuries were caused by shrapnel, although the ambulance service said it also treated nine people for acute anxiety.
Footage from the scene showed a line of ambulances and a helicopter arriving to evacuate the injured.
Most of the wounded were taken to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera for treatment, and others were evacuated to Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan, Ramban Hospital in Haifa, and Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva.
Sunday’s attack followed an incident on Friday night when a drone from Lebanon hit a retirement home in the central Israel city of Herzliya. There were no injuries in that attack.
In total, the military said that more than 115 projectiles were fired by Hezbollah into Israeli territory on Sunday in addition to the drones, periodically activating sirens in the Haifa area and throughout the Galilee.
No injuries were reported in any of those attacks.
Despite the drone strike, the Home Front Command announced on Sunday evening that it relaxed its instructions for parts of northern Israel.
The southern Golan moved from a “limited activity level” to a “partial activity level.”
Further south, the area of Afula, Mount Tabor, the Gilboa mountain range, the Beit Shean Valley, Megiddo, and Yokneam moved to a “full activity level with a limitation of gatherings and services of up to 2,000 people,” the army said.
The Wadi Ara region, where the Hezbollah drone struck, also received clearance to return to a full activity level.
It remained unclear how the drone strike would affect the new guidelines.
Gallant vows northern border will remain Hezbollah-free
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged earlier on Sunday that Israel would never let Hezbollah reestablish its presence along the Lebanon border as he toured the area on Sunday.
“These are military targets containing underground tunnels and weapon storages,” he said of Lebanese villages nearby. “Our troops found hundreds of RPGs, munitions, and anti-tank missiles here. The IDF is currently destroying these weapons above and under the ground.”
He said that he had “instructed the IDF at all levels to ensure the destruction of [attack infrastructure] and to ensure that terrorists cannot return to these places.”
“This is essential in order to ensure the safety of Israel’s northern communities,” he said, according to his office, adding that operations would continue until Israel’s goals are achieved.
IDF says 100 Hezbollah terrorists killed by division over past week
As part of the IDF’s operations in south Lebanon, troops of the 146th Division have killed some 100 Hezbollah operatives over the last week, the military said on Sunday.
The reserve formation is fighting near the coast, on the western edge of the IDF advance into southern Lebanon. Footage from the IDF’s operations shows tangled vegetation on the area’s hills.
According to the military, the 146th Division has found dozens of shafts leading to tunnels, bunkers, and fighting positions. More than 50 Hezbollah rocket launchers and 60 command centers were also destroyed.
The division is made up of brigade combat teams from the 2nd, 205th, 300th and 646th Brigades.
The IDF said forces in southern Lebanon also captured a Hezbollah terror operative in an underground bunker.
According to the IDF, troops identified a tunnel shaft inside a building leading to a 50-square-meter room some seven meters underground. The terror operative was hunkered down in the bunker, which also held weapons and supplies for an extended stay underground.
Video footage showed IDF troops instructing the Hezbollah fighter in Arabic to climb slowly out of the bunker, wearing only his underwear and shoes.
According to the IDF, the operative was taken to a detention facility inside of Israel for interrogation.
The military said that two soldiers were seriously hurt and several others were lightly to moderately wounded during ground operations on Sunday when troops came under “massive anti-tank fire.”
Hebrew media reports put the number of injured troops at around 25.
Hezbollah said it clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” border villages.
It later said it shelled Israeli soldiers gathered in the village of Maroun al-Ras, and that in Blida village, its forces engaged Israeli soldiers “with machine guns at point-blank range.”
One of the IDF’s airstrikes Sunday hit a 100-year-old mosque in the village of Kfar Tibnit near the border, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said.
“It was a significant place because families used to gather in the square right next to it (the mosque) on special occasions,” Mayor Fuad Yassin told AFP.
AFPTV footage from the northern Deir Billa area showed rescuers and villagers digging through debris left by a strike with their bare hands.
Hezbollah began launching attacks against Israel on October 8 last year, in the immediate aftermath of the terror onslaught carried out by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7. The Lebanese terror group claimed that it was striking Israel to show solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian people.
The Lebanese health ministry has said that more than 2,200 people in Lebanon have been killed over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and more than 10,000 have been wounded. More than 1,400 of the deaths occurred since fighting escalated in mid-September, although it was not clear how many of those killed were Hezbollah operatives.
Hezbollah has named 516 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon but some also in Syria. Another 94 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and dozens of civilians have also been killed.
These numbers have not been consistently updated since Israel began a new offensive against Hezbollah in September, including a ground operation in which the military says at least 450 Hezbollah operatives have been killed.
Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel over the last year have resulted in the deaths of 28 civilians. In addition, 37 IDF soldiers and reservists have died in cross-border skirmishes and in the ensuing ground operation launched in southern Lebanon in late September.
comments