Hezbollah Strikes Military Base Deep Inside Israel; Scores Killed, Injured

Beirut: Israel's military Sunday night acknowledged a Hezbollah drone has killed four soldiers and injured sixty others at one of its northern bases, as it expanded its bombardments of Lebanese towns and villages and troops battled fighters across the border.

The surprise attack on a training camp of elite Golani Brigades in Binyamina, near Haifa, was the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since war in Gaza started last October. Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded, many of them critically.

And as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon's south, United Nations peacekeepers said they had again been in the firing line.

They said Israeli troops "forcibly" entered a UN position with two tanks, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the multinational peace force to withdraw from the area immediately.

Israel's military said a tank had backed into the UN post while under fire and UN called it a possible war crime.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said late Sunday that it launched "a squadron of attack drones" at the Binyamina camp, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the major city of Haifa.

The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon's health ministry said killed at least 22 civilians in central Beirut.

In a later statement, Hezbollah warned Israel that "what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our noble and dear people."

An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted "over 60 wounded people" with injuries ranging from mild to critical.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year in support of fighters in Gaza.

Since late September, however, its strikes have reached further into the country.

Israel's sophisticated air defenses have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.

How Hezbollah Struck the Base

A Hezbollah drone hoodwinked Israel's much-vaunted Iron Dome air-defence system and struc the heavily fortified base. A worried Israel has launched a probe into how its air-defence system was penetrated rather easily. There are two reasons why it is likely that the Iron Dome, so effective against rockets, missed the drone fired from Lebanon by Hezbollah.

The drone that evaded the Iron Dome and dealt a blow is believed to be Mirsad-1, according to a report.The Times of Israel reported that two drones fired from the sea entered Israeli airspace on Sunday.

"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," the Israeli media outlet reported.

It was reported that it was one of the two Mirsad-1 drones that evaded the air-defence system on Sunday night.

The Mirsad-1 drone has a range of 120 km and a top speed of 370 km per hour, it quoted the Alma Center, an Israeli research institute. The drone can carry payload (explosives) of up to 40kg, and can fly as high as 3,000 metres, it added.

The Jerusalem Post said that Mirsad-1 was a drone that Hezbollah had deployed for over two decades, and it was based on Iranian designs.This isn't the first time that Hezbollah drones have entered Israeli airspace undetected.

On April 11, a Hezbollah drone flew undetected for nine minutes over "Western Galilee cities and settlements before returning safely to southern Lebanon", reported the Defence Industry Daily. It said it was Israeli locals who reported sighting the drone.

The Times of Israel reported that Israeli planes and helicopters pursued the other drone, but it fell off the radar system and the IDF lost track of it.

Hezbollah said in a statement that the "fighters of the Islamic Resistance targeted (for the fifth time) a gathering of Israeli enemy forces in the Manara settlement with a rocket barrage." 

"The fighters of the Islamic Resistance targeted a gathering of Israeli enemy forces at the Hounin barracks with a barrage of rockets," Hezbollah said. 

It added that "the fighters of the Islamic Resistance targeted movements of the zionist forces near the Fatima Gate in the town of Kfar Kila with artillery shells at 10:00 PM on Sunday, October 13, 2024."

Hezbollah said its operations were conducted in support of Palestinians in Gaza and in defense of Lebanon.

Isreal Hits Civilian Targets

Lebanon's official National News Agency said Israeli forces had "escalated their attacks" on southern Lebanon with "successive air strikes" pounding several border villages.

It later reported that an Israeli strike on Mayfadoun, near Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, had killed five people and wounded one other.

Hezbollah said its forces clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to "infiltrate" villages along the border.

Before the drone strike it had said it launched a salvo of rockets at a "base in southern Haifa."

The group later aired an audio recording of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah calling on fighters to "defend this holy and blessed land and this honorable people."

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in south Beirut on September 27, and several other senior commanders of the movement have also been killed.

Israel's military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.

Threats to UN Forces

UN peacekeepers accused Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions before dawn Sunday in south Lebanon, the latest of several incidents the UNIFIL mission has reported since Thursday.

Five Blue Helmets have so far been injured, provoking international condemnation.

"Two IDF (Israeli military) Merkava tanks destroyed the position's main gate and forcibly entered the position" in the Ramia area, before leaving 45 minutes later, UNIFIL said.

The Israeli military later said a tank "backed several meters into a UNIFIL post" while "under fire" and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.

Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu had called on the UN to move peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm's way, after the mission rejected requests to abandon its positions.

The peacekeepers' presence had "the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields," said Netanyahu.

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sunday said "attacks" against peacekeepers "may constitute a war crime."

UNIFIL, with about 9,500 troops, is in southern Lebanon under the longstanding UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

Three Lebanese soldiers were wounded on Sunday, the country's army said, when Israeli forces fired on military vehicles in the Marjayoun area.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call with Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, appealed to Tehran to support "a general de-escalation" in Lebanon and Gaza, his office said.Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli shelling had killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more Sunday at a school turned shelter for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza's Nuseirat camp.

"The school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded," said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency.

Separately, the military said early Monday that it had carried out a strike targeting a "command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served as the 'Shuhadah Al-Aqsa' hospital."

Civil defense spokesman Bassal said the strike had killed four people and wounded many more, noting it was the seventh time an attack had hit the "tents for displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital."

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday that a WHO-Palestine Red Crescent operation had managed to resupply two hospitals in northern Gaza.

"WHO and partners finally managed to reach Kamal Adwan and Al-Sahaba hospitals yesterday after 9 attempts this past week," he posted on X.

The Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and its US military crew to Israel to help the ally protect itself from potential Iranian attack.