Israel yesterday said that it bombed Hezbollah sites in Lebanon, piling pressure on the militant group already reeling after a series of deadly explosions targeting its communications systems that it blamed on Israel.
The coordinated blasts involving electronic devices killed 32 people across two days and wounded more than 3,000, Lebanese Ministry of Health figures showed.
Israel has not commented on the attacks in which Hezbollah operatives’ pagers and walkie-talkies exploded.
Photo: AFP
However, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said in reference to Israel’s border with Lebanon: “The center of gravity is moving northward.”
“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” Gallant said.
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has been fighting a war in Gaza since it attacked Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
For nearly a year, the focus of Israel’s firepower has been on Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily clashes with Hezbollah militants along its northern border.
In the latest cross-border fire, the Israeli military said it struck six Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” and a weapons storage facility in southern Lebanon overnight.
Rattled by the attacks that targeted its communications system, Hezbollah said that Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and vowed revenge.
Hezbollah said that 20 of its members had been killed, with a source close to the group saying they had died when their walkie-talkies exploded a day earlier.
Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdallah Bou Habib said that the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.”
Iran’s envoy to the UN said the country “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures” after its ambassador in Beirut was wounded in the blasts.
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