Netanyahu vows no mercy after deadly Hezbollah drone strike on Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to strike Hezbollah without mercy, a day after the Iran-backed group’s deadliest strike on Israel since the start of the war in late September.

Hezbollah’s drone attack on an Israeli base killed four soldiers on Sunday, while another 60 people were injured, according to the Israeli volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah.

“We will continue to mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon – including Beirut,” Netanyahu said as he visited the base near Binyamina, south of Haifa.

Hezbollah said it launched the “squadron of attack drones” in response to Israeli attacks, including one last week that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.

Since Israel on September 23 escalated its bombing against targets in Lebanon the war has killed at least 1,315 people.

Prior to Netanyahu’s comments a string of new airstrikes had already occurred against targets around Lebanon, including one in a northern Christian-majority village which killed at least 21 people, according to the health ministry.

Yousef, the manager of a restaurant near the Binyamina base, said that he heard “a huge boom” before many ambulances arrived.

Hezbollah said on Monday around midday that it had launched rockets at a naval base near Haifa before a further “big rocket salvo” in the early evening at the northern Israeli town of Safed.

Its fighters were also “engaged in violent clashes” in the Lebanese frontier village of Aita al-Shaab, and were fighting elsewhere as well, it said.

Air raid sirens sounded across central Israel in the early evening, including in the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, the military said, after it earlier reported the interception of two drones approaching from Syria.

After almost a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli forces over the Lebanon border, Israel intensified its strikes against targets in Lebanon late last month before sending ground troops across the frontier.

Israel wants to push back Hezbollah in order to secure its northern boundary and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire over the last year to return home safely.

Hezbollah says its strikes are in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7 last year, triggering the ongoing Gaza war with Israel.

The International Organization for Migration said last week it had verified 690,000 displaced people in Lebanon.