The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen.
IDF chief says Iranian general Soleimani ‘personally’ oversaw drone attack plans
IDF chief Aviv Kohavi says IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani personally led the plot to attack a number of targets in northern Israel with explosives-laden attack drones from Syria.
“The person who led this attack and commanded it was Qassem Soleimani personally. He funded, coached and trained Shiite operatives, who were supposed to carry it out,” Kohavi says in a video of a meeting in the IDF Northern Command late Saturday night, released by the military.
The army chief warns that the military must “prepare for any eventuality,” as Iran may retaliate against the Israeli strikes.
“We will [prepare] in the best way possible,” he says.
Monitor raises death toll from Syria strike to 5
A war monitor raises the death toll from an Israeli strike on Iranian targets in Syria to five.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, two of those killed were operatives from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah and one was a member of an Iranian militia. It says the identity of the other two casualties are not yet known.
IDF: 4 Iranian operatives recently arrived in Syria to pilot kamikaze drones
The Israel Defense Forces says the attack drones that Iran intended to use against the Jewish state on Saturday night had been flown into Syria from Tehran several weeks ago, along with a number of Iranian military officials.
According to IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps planned to fly the explosive-laden kamikaze drones into a number of targets in northern Israel.
“Each one of these attack drones would carry several kilograms of explosives,” he says.
Conricus says the military has been monitoring the Iranian plot for “a number of weeks.”
Last Thursday, the IRGC-backed cell first tried to fly these attack drones into northern Israel from the Syrian village Erneh, the IDF spokesman says, but this effort was blocked by the Israeli military.
Conricus refuses to comment on the exact method used to thwart the attack, but says it was “not necessarily kinetic,” appearing to indicate that some method of electronic warfare was employed.
According to the spokesman, the Iranian drones used in the attack were of a similar variety that Tehran-backed militias have used elsewhere in the Middle East, namely by Yemen’s Houthis.
“The modus operandi is similar to what we have seen in other places in the Middle East — in Yemen and Saudi Arabia,” Conricus says.
He says the equipment, as well as a number of operatives, were flown in from Tehran through the international airport of Damascus.
The spokesman says their base of operations was in the village of Aqrabah, near Damascus.
Conricus says Israel sees Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime as responsible for the attacks as it aware of the plot and gave it de facto support by allowing it to take place.
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