TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / September 13, 2024
Hezbollah stated that this operation was a retaliation for the massacre carried out by Israeli forces on Thursday in the town of Kfarjouz, near Nabatieh in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese movement Hezbollah announced on Friday that it had attacked, using drones, an Israeli military base near the city of Safed in the Galilee, inflicting casualties among the Israeli forces. In response, the Israeli army launched airstrikes on areas in southern Lebanon.
In a statement, Hezbollah said the Filon base, the headquarters of the 210th Division’s brigades and its warehouses in the northern region, was hit by squadrons of suicide drones. The attack reportedly targeted officers and soldiers, resulting in a confirmed hit.
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a drone launched from southern Lebanon crashed near Safed, igniting a fire in the area.
Earlier in the day, Hezbollah announced that it had fired Katyusha rockets at the main air defense base of Israel’s Northern Command, located in the Beria barracks near Safed, also in response to the Kfarjouz incident.
The rocket barrage caused power outages in parts of Safed, with large fires breaking out around the city and in the Beria Forest. According to the Israeli army, at least 20 missiles were launched from southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah stated that this operation was a retaliation for the massacre carried out by Israeli forces on Thursday in the town of Kfarjouz, near Nabatieh in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that an Israeli drone strike on Kfarjouz killed three people, including a child, and injured three others. Hezbollah later mourned the loss of two of its fighters in the same strike.
Israeli claims denied
Also on Thursday, the Israeli army announced that its special forces had carried out earlier this week a raid on a weapons facility run by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Maysaf area, in Syria.
According to reports, the facility, used as a scientific research center associated with manufacturing chemical weapons, had been destroyed in this “highly unusual raid”.
The US-based news website Axios cited sources as saying that said the Israeli government had “stayed unusually silent about it and didn’t claim responsibility in order not to provoke a retaliation by Syria, Iran or Hezbollah.”
Iranian sources, however, promptly denied the unconfirmed reports.
The Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that “an informed source categorically denied those stories.”
“Basically, no Iranian force has been present in Syria in that claimed location (Masyaf), while that region was the location of presence of the Syrian Army. Therefore, the subsequent claim, namely harm to Iranian forces or them being captured, is a complete lie,” the source reportedly told Tasnim.
