Israel vowed Saturday it is “preparing a response” to Iran’s “unprecedented and unlawful attack,” an ominous warning which came as the military reported taking out hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists and more than 2,000 of the group’s targets since its offensive in Lebanon began this week — including another of the organization’s leaders.
The Israel Defense Forces pledged a “serious and significant” answer to the Iranian offensive and noted it was spending time developing a plan that would have to be approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel.
“The IDF is preparing a response to the unprecedented and unlawful Iranian attack on Israeli civilians and Israel,” a military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Guardian.
One person was killed and two others hurt after Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles on Israeli civilian spaces Tuesday.
In other developments:
- The IDF has apparently killed Hashem Safieddine, who was being eyed as the next leader of Hezbollah after Hassan Nasrallah was “neutralized” last week. Safieddine has been out of contact since Israel carried out a large airstrike in Beirut that IDF officials say was targeted specifically to reach the underground bunker he was hiding in.
Safieddine is a maternal cousin of Nasrallah. The pair harbored the same staunch criticism of Israel and the West, with deep alliances with the Iranian leadership, CNN reported.
Safieddine served as head of Hezbollah’s executive council and, until his predecessor’s death, was seen as one of the most likely heirs to the organization’s highest-ranking seat.
- Saeed Atallah, of Hamas’ armed wing, was killed in an airstrike in northern Lebanon, along with his wife and two young daughters, Israel said Saturday. Atallah was the leader of the al-Qassam brigades — the military arm of the Palestinian nationalist organization.
The family was hunkered down in a Palestinian refugee camp in the coastal city of Tripoli.
The targeted attack marks the first strike in northern Lebanon since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas.
Four others who were in a nearby apartment building were killed in the airstrike, the Lebanese Civil Defense reported.
- Hamas leader Mohammed Hussein al-Lawis, described as the group’s “executive authority in Lebanon” who the Times of Israel reported directed terror attacks in the West Bank, was also killed during an airstrike in the BeqaaValley town of Saadnayel.
Hussein al-Lawis is reportedly responsible for “Hamas’s entrenchment inside Lebanon, using it to supply weapons for rocket attacks against Israel and in attempts to manufacture advanced weaponry,” the IDF said.
Hamas also confirmed al-Lawis’s death in a statement.
- Israel estimated it has killed more than 400 Hezbollah operatives during ground operations in southern Lebanon since Monday, which has “severely hit” the group’s chain of command, IDF Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told CNN, who added, “this is painful to the Iranian leadership.”
- The Jewish State rained down a series of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah command centers, weapons caches, tunnels and more in Lebanon on Saturday, killing dozens of operatives. The IDF said Saturday it also targeted a command center embedded in a Southern Lebanon mosque that was being used “to plan and carry out acts of terror against IDF troops and the State of Israel,” the Times of Israel reported. The drone strike was “precise” and based on intelligence, according to the IDF.
- The Jewish State’s military also claimed it demolished several Hezbollah tunnel shafts used by operatives to get close to the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, where caches of weapons were discovered and seized.
- Netanyahu touted offensives in a public address Saturday, but said the IDF has additional plans to continue its mission of eliminating the Hezbollah threat. “Although we have not yet completed the removal of the threat, we have clearly changed the course of the war and the balance of the war,” he said.
- Three people suffered minor injuries after Hezbollah fired rockets at the northern Arab village of Deir al-Asad Saturday.
- Hundreds of foreign nationals are racing to evacuate Lebanon as the fighting continues, including about 250 Americans who were flown back to the States this week. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller estimated that around 7,000 US citizens in Lebanon had registered with the US government to receive information about leaving the country.
And with the approaching one year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israeli President Isaac Herzog issued a statement saying, “in many senses, we are all still living in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” adding antisemitism “came charging forward throughout the world in the wake of the war with Hamas.”
“Iran and its terror proxies … are blinded by hatred and bent on the destruction of our one and only Jewish nation state,” Herzog said, adding, “We have not abandoned our deep longing and aspiration for peace with our neighbors.
With Post wires
