BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it targeted a command base in northern Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the killings of one of its commanders and a Hamas leader.
Hezbollah said the attack was part of its response to the killings of top field commander Wissam Tawil on Monday and Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri on January 2.
The Shiite Muslim movement, a Hamas ally, said in a statement that it had targeted the “enemy’s northern command centre” in the Israeli city of Safed with “several suicide drones”.
The Israeli military confirmed that a “hostile aircraft” had crashed at one of its bases in the north, and said that “no injuries or damage were reported”.
Hezbollah and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.
Tawil — the highest-ranking Hezbollah member was killed since October 7 — was buried in his south Lebanon home village of Khirbit Silm on Tuesday.
Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters attended the funeral procession in which the group’s yellow flag was draped over his coffin.
The Hezbollah statement said Tawil was involved in the abduction of Israeli soldiers which triggered its war with Israel in 2006, and that he also took part in noteworthy operations in Syria.
He had also “directed numerous operations” against Israeli forces since the Gaza war began, Hezbollah said.
The group’s number two Naim Qassem, in a speech on Tuesday, described Tawil as a member of Hezbollah’s elite al-Radwan Brigade who had fought on several fronts.
He warned that Israel’s wave of targeted killings “cannot lead to a phase of retreat but rather to a push forward for the resistance”.
Earlier on Tuesday, an Israeli strike targeted a car in the south Lebanon village of Ghandouria, the country’s National News Agency (NNA) said.
The strike left “three Hezbollah fighters dead” a security source told a foreign news agency, requesting anonymity for security reasons.
Shortly before Tawil’s procession began, Israel struck a car parked in Khirbit Silm, according to the NNA and eyewitnesses.
Hezbollah later said four of its fighters had been killed.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Israel’s army said it had “eliminated” Ali Burji, one of the four slain Hezbollah fighters.
It described him as “the commander of the southern Lebanon region of Hezbollah’s aerial unit” who was responsible for the attack on the Israeli base earlier in the day.
Hezbollah did not name Burji as a commander in his death notice, with a source close to the group telling he was “absolutely not” the commander of its aerial unit or the man behind Tuesday’s attack.
Hezbollah later denied Israel’s claim in a statement, adding that the commander “in charge of Hezbollah’s drone unit has not been the target of any assassination attempt like the enemy claimed”.
On Saturday, Hezbollah said it had fired more than 60 rockets at an Israeli military base in response to Hamas deputy leader Aruri’s killing in Beirut which was widely blamed on Israel.
Aruri, the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the Gaza war, was killed in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold in the first strike on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began.
