The Israel Defense Forces said Monday said it struck Hezbollah targets “deep” in Lebanon after the terror group shot down a military drone hours earlier, amid ongoing border skirmishes and fears of a wider conflict.
Lebanese media reported strikes near the city of Baalbek in northeast Lebanon, in what appeared to be the deepest publicly confirmed Israeli strikes in Lebanon in years. Two members of the terror group were killed in one of the strikes.
On Monday morning, Hezbollah in a statement said it had downed an Israeli Air Force drone, an Elbit Hermes 450 model, over the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon with a surface-to-air missile.
Footage posted online showed the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on fire and spiraling out of control.
The IDF confirmed shortly after that one of its UAVs was shot down over southern Lebanon.
It said in a statement that the David’s Sling medium-range air defense system had successfully intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired by Hezbollah at an IDF drone, but a short while later a second missile struck the UAV.
“As a result, the aircraft fell in Lebanese territory,” the IDF said.
Following the incident, the IDF said it had launched strikes against Hezbollah targets “deep” in Lebanon, and in a later update, said it had targeted several sites belonging to the terror group’s air defense unit in the Beqaa Valley.
Lebanese media said the strikes were carried out near the city of Baalbek.
Baalbek, an area identified in the past as a Hezbollah stronghold, is nearly 100 kilometers from the Israeli border.
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