An apparent Israeli drone strike Thursday in southern Lebanon targeted two Hezbollah operatives, reportedly including a senior commander in the Lebanese terror group, following repeated missile attacks that left three IDF soldiers wounded — one seriously — and damaged a house near the border.
As a rash of cross-border attacks throughout the day kept tensions at the border high, Israel’s air force chief threatened that hundreds of attack aircraft could be flown into Lebanon at a moment’s notice.
Video from the Lebanese town of Nabatieh, some 11 kilometers (7 miles) from Israel’s northern border, showed a car in flames after it was apparently struck from the air.
One clip appeared to show the moment the car was hit.
There was conflicting information about the Hezbollah members’ condition after the apparent strike, with some reports saying one or both of them were killed. But a Lebanese security source told AFP that a senior operative was “seriously wounded and a companion was also injured.”
Sky News Arabic identified the high-ranking Hezbollah member as Abbas Al-Debes, while the other was not immediately named.
According to Arabic media reports, Al-Debes was tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was helping Iran set up air defenses in Syria.
Hebrew media outlets said Al-Debes was also Hezbollah’s regional commander of the area from which an anti-tank missile was fired earlier Thursday at a base near Kiryat Shmona, seriously wounding a non-commissioned officer and lightly hurting two other soldiers.
There was no direct comment from Hezbollah or the Israel Defense Forces on Al-Debes, though the latter issued a statement saying it carried out a new wave of strikes on Hezbollah targets on Thursday, including on a building used by the Iran-backed terror group and other infrastructure in the towns of Khiam, Nabatieh and Kfar Hamam.
The military said fighter jets also struck a Hezbollah truck ferrying weapons.
The strikes came as Israeli Air Force commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar warned Hezbollah that Israel was prepared to significantly ratchet up its strikes against the terror group.
“Hezbollah will continue to pay with the loss of its systems. Dozens of aircraft are now operating in the skies of southern Lebanon, and as soon as the order is given, the dozens will turn into hundreds that will perform the missions within minutes of being scrambled,” Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar said at an internal IAF conference, according to a transcript published by the IDF.
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