As the Israeli military in Gaza tightens the noose around Hamas leaders who planned and executed the October 7 massacre, Iran-backed Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are stepping up cross-borders attacks into northern Israel.
The Israeli military on Thursday launched retaliatory strikes, hitting Hezbollah’s rocket launchers and terrorist sites in southern Lebanon. “The IDF says it is responding to barrages of rockets on northern Israel from Lebanon by striking the sources of the fire,” The Times of Israel reported Thursday afternoon. “The IDF also confirms it carried out strikes against a number of areas in Lebanon overnight and this morning, without elaborating further.”
Recent Israeli airstrikes reportedly eliminated several terror operatives in Syria and Lebanon, including Razi Mousavi, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Guard (IRGC) terror group, who was directing Iranian terrorist activities in Syria and Lebanon.
Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border has been joined by other pro-Iranian militias. On Wednesday, an Iran-backed terrorist militia reportedly carried out an aerial surveillance into Israel from its base in Syria.
“An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reportedly crashed in the Golan Heights with no casualties, [Israeli broadcaster] Kan reported overnight. While the drone was initially believed to have been launched from Syria, Iran-linked militia in Iraq claimed responsibility over the incident,” the Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported Thursday. “This is the first instance of such an incident occurring in the area since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, but not the first time Iran-backed militia have escalated the situation in the region during the conflict.”
Since Monday, the IDF carried out further strikes against Hezbollah targets, killing several terrorists — including one holding Australian citizenship, the Israeli media reported.
“Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah said one of two Australian brothers killed in the strike on Wednesday, Ali Bazzi, was one of its fighters,” Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday.
The incident suggests that Hezbollah is apparently attracting foreign fighters in its ongoing jihad warfare against Israel. Mass migration from the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries has led to an increase in the number of terror supporters and operatives in the West. Germany alone is home to around 450 Hamas and 1,250 Hezbollah terror operatives, the German intelligence agency (BfV) estimated in July 2023,
Benny Gantz, former IDF chief and senior member of the Israeli war-time cabinet, warned that Lebanon — under the influence of Iran and Hezbollah — was dragging itself into a war with Israel.
The British newspaper Telegraph reported the minister’s warning:
War cabinet minister Benny Gantz said that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would soon intervene if Lebanese authorities did not act to stop the Iran-backed group from firing across the frontier.“The situation on Israel’s northern border demands change,” Mr Gantz told a press conference on Wednesday night.“The stopwatch for a diplomatic solution is running out, if the world and the Lebanese government don’t act in order to prevent the firing on Israel’s northern residents, and to distance Hezbollah from the border, the IDF will do it.”Cross-border exchanges have steadily intensified since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the IDF has been training reservists and regular troops for possible military operations against Hezbollah in the north of the country. “As rockets from Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces streamed in from Lebanon, Israeli officials said they were prepared to take the war to a second front,” The New York Times noted Thursday.
Meanwhile, the IDF is engaged in a fierce battle to capture Hamas strongholds across Gaza, particularly the terrorist bastion of Khan Yunis in the south. Top Hamas terrorists and architects of the October 7 massacre, such as Hamas’ chief Yahya Sinwar and terror group’s ‘military’ chief Mohammed Deif, are believed to be hiding there.
Israeli soldiers on Thursday found more underground tunnels and a Hamas war room in the area, the Jerusalem Post reported:
The IDF’s 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade uncovered on Thursday an underground route that was connected to a war room belonging to Nukhba commandos of the Hamas terror organization in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.The soldiers in the brigade had “eliminated terrorists and located several tunnel shafts and terrorist infrastructure that were subsequently destroyed by combat engineering soldiers,” the IDF said, and “located a tunnel shaft and a rocket launcher inside a mosque, which was next to a school.”Israeli forces found inside the mosque a staging area that included observation and combat posts that endangered the soldiers.The tunnel and the war room were used by Nukhba operatives as a place of combat and transfer of weapons. Israel forces had since dismantled the tunnel route and the war room.
The Israeli military continued to clear Gaza of Hamas terrorists in house-to-house combat. The IDF on Thursday disclosed the details of the ongoing Gaza operation:
IDF ground troops operated in the heart of Daraj Tuffah [northern Gaza], guiding an IAF fighter jet to strike an anti-tank missile terrorist cellAfter RPG missiles were fired from inside a building toward an IDF vehicle, IDF ground troops destroyed terrorist infrastructure located inside the building. Additionally, an anti-tank missile launch site where terrorist operatives were located was struck by the IAF with the direction of IDF ground forces,Over the last two days, IDF troops conducted operational activity in the Daraj Tuffah area and eliminated terrorists in both ground and aerial strikes.In a separate incident, terrorists fired at IDF troops from a building during operational activity. Following searches of the residence from which the shots were fired, the troops located dozens of weapons.IDF naval forces are also continuing to provide fire support to troops operating on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli security services conducted a large-scale raid at several locations in the West Bank, busting a major Palestinian terror-financing network. The i24NEWS reported:
Israeli security forces on Thursday reported conducting an extensive operation across the West Bank. Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Cyber Unit, Shin Bet and Israeli Police cooperated on locating and confiscating “millions of shekels” (1 shekel = 0.28 U.S. dollars).21 people are said to have been arrested during the raid, according to the Israeli security forces’ joint statement.Additionally, Israeli Air Forces stroke at a terrorist cell responding to an attack against the IDF troops on the ground during the raid in Jenin.
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