By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Worthy News) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah did not rule out more massive attacks against Israel on Sunday after his group fired hundreds of rockets and drones into the Jewish nation, following Israeli air strikes in Lebanon.
Nasrallah said Lebanon-based Hezbollah would “assess” Sunday’s strikes on Israeli military targets before deciding to hit Israel again on such a scale.
Hezbollah already announced Sunday it had completed its “first phase” of a response to Israel’s killing of the group’s top commander in a strike on a Beirut suburb last month.
The Iran-backed group, deemed a terrorist organization by most of Israel’s allies, claimed it hit 11 Israeli military sites, fired over 320 rockets, and sent drones flying into northern Israel.
The strikes came after Israel’s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets overnight to prevent a larger attack. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they hit numerous locations and destroyed thousands of launchers.
Sunday’s clashes, one of the biggest clashes in more than ten months of border warfare, led to mounting fears of all-out war between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel.
Witnesses said missiles were visible, curling up through the dawn sky, dark vapor trails behind them. An air raid siren sounded in Israel, and a distant blast lit the horizon while smoke rose over houses in Khiam in southern Lebanon.
BAKAA VALLEY
Nasrallah said projectiles fired at Israel included drones fired from the eastern Bekaa Valley, a first for the group. None of the drone or rocket launchers were damaged in Israel’s pre-emptive strikes, he claimed, despite Israeli sources suggesting otherwise.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah had not planned a larger attack, specifically denying Israeli military statements that the group had intended to fire thousands of projectiles. Israeli sources said Hezbollah had been moving thousands of rockets aimed at Israel into place.
Yet Nasrallah acknowledged that the operation had been delayed for several reasons, including what he called a “mobilization” of Israeli and American military assets in the region amid fears of an all-out war in the area.
Already, tens of thousands of people in Israel and Lebanon have been displaced due to ongoing cross-border skirmishes.
Yet hopes of avoiding such broader armed conflict dimmed late Sunday as Hezbollah ally Hamas said it rejects new Israeli conditions put forward in Gaza ceasefire-hostage talks.
Months of on-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s 10-month military campaign in Gaza or free the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Key sticking points in ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar include an Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5 km-long (nine-mile) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
Hamas said Israel has backtracked on a commitment to withdraw troops from the Corridor and put forward other new conditions, including the screening of displaced Palestinians as they return to the enclave’s more heavily populated north when the ceasefire begins.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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