Hezbollah fires over 200 rockets into Israel after killing of senior commander

BEIRUT — Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists launched more than 200 rockets on Thursday at several military bases in Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed one of the group’s senior commanders.

The attack by the Iran-backed terrorist group was one of the largest in the monthslong conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border, with tensions escalating in recent weeks.

The Israeli military said “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets” had entered its territory from Lebanon, many of which it said were intercepted. It confirmed the death of one soldier in the barrage.

It said about 200 “projectiles” were launched toward the Golan Heights and over 20 drones into Israeli territory, but that it had intercepted some of them.

After Hezbollah’s attack, Israel struck various towns in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah’s “military structures” in the southern border towns of Ramyeh and Houla. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike of Houla killed at least one person. Israeli jets also broke the sound barrier over the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and other areas in the country.

Israel on Wednesday acknowledged that it had killed Mohammad Naameh Nasser, who headed one of Hezbollah’s three regional divisions in southern Lebanon, a day earlier.

Hours after the killing, Hezbollah launched scores of Katyusha rockets and Falaq rockets with heavy warheads into northern Israel and the Golan. It launched more rockets on Thursday and said it had also sent exploding drones into several bases.

Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war in a move that is recognized by the United States but otherwise rejected by the international community.

Hashem Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, vowed that the group will continue its retaliatory attacks, “targeting new sites they never imagined would be hit.”

“The enemy sometimes acknowledges these hits and sometimes does not, but it is certain that there have been many casualties,” he said at Nasser’s funeral.

Nasser was of great importance to Hezbollah, which said he took part in battles in conflicts in Syria and Iraq from 2011 until 2016 and fought in the group’s last war with Israel in 2006. Two other senior Hezbollah commanders have also been killed.

The U.S. and France are continuing to scramble to prevent the skirmishes from spiraling into an all-out war, which they fear could spill over across the region.