The IDF said on Wednesday it had bombed Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley overnight, and Hezbollah carried out an attack on the Golan in retaliation.
One man was moderately wounded, and several fires broke out in the town of Katzrin in the Golan Heights after Hezbollah launched around 50 rockets into northern Israel early on Wednesday morning, several of which directly hit the town.
In the largest attack the town has seen since Hezbollah began its attacks in October, many rockets struck houses in Katzrin, although the IDF intercepted some of the projectiles.
Magen David Adom stated that the wounded man was in his 30s and was hit by shrapnel. He was transferred to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed in moderate condition for treatment. Two others were treated for anxiety.
“We are, after one more challenging day, here in the city of Katzrin in the middle of the Golan Heights. [This is a] village with approximately 8,000 people that, this morning, Hezbollah launched over this village several rockets, some of them directly hit [these] two buildings behind us [where] these two families [sat] for their morning breakfast,” Northern Command Home Front Division, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Alon Friedman said in Katzrin, the IDF reported Wednesday evening.
“[There is] no doubt, Hezbollah is launching over this neighborhood to directly hit our citizens who are trying to live here peacefully in the Golan Heights,” Friedman added.
The Bekaa Valley is a Hezbollah stronghold; the latest hostilities across the Israel-Lebanon border fuel concern that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza could spill out into an all-out Middle East conflict.
Israel also said it killed a terrorist in Sidon in southern Lebanon who worked with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Tehran-aligned Hezbollah.
IAF carries out airstrikes in Beqaa, Lebanon. August 21, 2024. (Credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT).
The Israeli military said its warplanes had attacked several Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in the Bekaa area.
“Following the strikes, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of large amounts of weapons in the facilities that were struck,” it said in a statement.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Attacking munitions warehouses in Lebanon is preparation for anything that might happen.”
The sources said the strike was in a residential area near the eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, an area populated mainly by Shi’ite Muslims from whom Hezbollah draws its support.
The airstrikes killed at least two people and injured 19, according to security sources, but it was not immediately clear if those killed were civilians or fighters.
Hezbollah said it had retaliated for the strike on the Bekaa by firing Katyusha rockets at an Israeli military logistics site in the Golan Heights, and by later firing a swarm of drones on military posts in the kibbutz of Amiad in northern Israel, about 22 km from the Lebanese border.
Israel said the militant killed in Sidon was named Khalil Hussein Khalil Al-Maqdah. Two Palestinian sources told Reuters earlier that Maqdah was killed, identifying him as a member of the armed wing of the Palestinian faction Fatah.
IDF operations in Gaza continue
In Gaza, the IDF continued to dismantle large amounts of terrorist infrastructure and eliminated multiple armed terrorists, the military said on Wednesday.
It added that it had located several caches of weapons, including explosives and grenades, in Rafah and Khan Yunis.
Also in Khan Yunis, the IDF carried out targeted raids on terror targets and dismantled compounds based on precise intelligence.
Alongside the Israel Air Force, troops killed several terrorists operating in the same area from which rockets were launched into Israeli territory, the IDF added.
Over the past 24 hours, the IAF carried out targeted strikes on 30 terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including military structures, armed terrorists, launch sites, tunnel shafts, and an observation post, the IDF said.