Israeli jets set off sonic booms in Beirut as Nasrallah threatens ‘strong’ reprisal

Israeli jets set off sonic booms in Beirut as Nasrallah threatens ‘strong’ reprisal

Emanuel Fabian

ToI Staff

Gianluca Pacchiani

Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut just ahead of a pugnacious speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday afternoon, as northern residents were told to stay close to bomb shelters amid a series of cross-border attacks from Lebanon.

Several local authorities, including the northern city of Nahariya, issued the warnings, despite no such directive having been issued by the IDF Home Front Command, and gave the all-clear a short while later.

Local authorities have regularly issued their own recommendations to civilians amid near-daily cross-border attacks from Hezbollah since October 8. The Iran-backed group has vowed retaliation for Israel’s killing of its commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut last week, prompting worries of a major escalation that could tip into a full-blown war.

At the beginning of his televised address on Tuesday to mark the one-week anniversary of Shukr’s death, Nasrallah charged that the sonic booms set off by Israeli planes flying low over Beirut were intended as a provocation that he brushed off as “petty.”

The loud booms sent residents rushing to open their windows to prevent the glass from shattering or standing on their balconies to get a glimpse of the planes flying over. There was no comment from the IDF.

The Hezbollah leader said that his terror group cannot be expected to react to Shukr’s assassination the same way it has reacted to other killings in the past months.

“We have not sought escalations until now, we have been fighting in support of Gaza but keeping in mind the Lebanese national interest,” Nasrallah said. “Every time one of our commanders was killed, our response was heightened but always measured.

“But an assassination of a top leader in the Dahia [Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut] must be treated differently,” he added.“Our response is coming, God willing, from us and the axis of resistance — and it will be strong.”

Rocket and drone alert sirens rang out in northern communities near the Lebanon border multiple times on Tuesday afternoon, though a Hezbollah source told Reuters that “the response to the assassination of commander Fuad Shukr has not yet come.”

The strike that killed the Hezbollah commander last week marked the second time Israel struck the southern suburbs of Beirut in 10 months of hostilities. The Iran-backed group says its attacks are in support of Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas.