Hezbollah fired many rounds of rockets on Wednesday, totaling close to 150 attacks, killing two people in Kiryat Shmona, and wounding eight others in direct hits in the Haifa area, Safed and some other northern areas.
The Lebanese terror group fired 40 rockets earlier Wednesday from Lebanon towards the Upper Galilee and Haifa Bay, killing two people in Kiryat Shmona and wounding eight.
Of the 40 rockets, the IDF reported that 20 of them were detected in a barrage towards Kiryat Shmona alone.
The two killed were later named as Dvir Sharvit, 43, and Revital Yehud, 45.
They sustained fatal wounds due to falling shrapnel while walking their dogs and did not have time to enter the protected area.
IDF shoots down more rockets, more injuries occur
Separately, three people were treated by MDA paramedics in the Haifa Bay area. All three of the wounded were hit by shrapnel, one of whom is a 16-year-old in moderate condition, and another is approximately 50 years old and suffering from light wounds, MDA reported.
A total of eight people were brought to the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa for medical treatment, with one in serious condition and the rest suffering from minor wounds.
Along with those brought for medical treatment, another individual was wounded in a motorcycle accident that occurred while sirens were activated and is in moderate condition.
The IDF noted that it had shot down many rockets, but did not comment on the deaths or wounded.
In a statement, the police called on the public to refrain from going near areas containing shrapnel and rocket remains due to the fear that they may still contain explosive materials.
Five firefighter crews from the Galilee and Golan areas were deployed to Kiryat Shmona to extinguish fires that broke out as a result of missiles that hit the town.
Later Wednesday, Hezbollah launched around 90 more rockets, this time with direct hits in Safed and other areas.
Following warning sirens in Safed, two hits on buildings were reported, though there were no reports of casualties.
Even later Wednesday night there were various indications that Hezbollah might try an even larger rocket attack on the Haifa area.
Following Hezbollah's success at striking the Haifa area on Tuesday, the IDF later Tuesday and early Wednesday significantly increased its pace of airstrikes to try to roll back the groups' rocket attacks.
Shift to third phase
The IDF announced on Wednesday that it had upped its airstrikes over the last 24 hours to 185 targets across all of Lebanon.
This was a significant increase as compared to days when the strikes have been in the dozens or even from Monday when the air force struck around 120 targets, but almost exclusively in southern Lebanon.
Also, the targets were once again more spread out as opposed to being focused on southern Lebanon, which had been the trend since the IDF invasion started on September 30.
These changes could also mark a shift in strategy as the IDF possibly moves into a third phase of its major moves against Hezbollah which started in mid-September.
The first phase saw two days of Hezbollah operatives and communications being torn apart by beeper and walkie-walkie explosions. It also included the killing of Ibrahim Aqil and around 20 of his top sub-commanders of the Radwan special forces. On September 23, it included the air force hitting 1,300 targets in only one day. Finally, on September 27, it included the assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as well as a number of other top Hezbollah officials, like Ali Karaki.
IDF officials have said that the strategy for Phase I was to disable Hezbollah's capability to harm the Israeli home front in a devastating way as well as to lay the groundwork for a potential invasion, if needed.
Phase two saw the invasion of southern Lebanon to take apart Hezbollah's Radwan potential invasion weapons, tunnels, and positions. The air force, likewise, since September 30, has focused much more on southern Lebanon, especially providing real-time support to maneuvering ground forces facing ambushes from Hezbollah.
Every few days, the IDF sent in an additional division: first Division 98, then Division 36, then Division 91, and on Tuesday, Division 143, with more increases expected. They have increased the pace of destroying Hezbollah infrastructure in certain southern Lebanon villages, such as Mavarchin.
However, in what might be Phase 3, Division 98 is already receiving new maneuvering orders and IDF sources have said that they believe some initial missions of clearing Hezbollah positions will soon be taken care of sufficiently to move on to additional missions.
Air force refocusing
In turn, the air force may be refocusing on wider rocket threats throughout Lebanon.
If by September 30, it was assumed that Hezbollah's failure to fire deeper into Israel and cause serious damage had shown they were truly losing that capability, Tuesday's and Wednesday’s attacks on the Haifa area may have convinced top defense officials to return to striking beyond southern Lebanon to cause greater damage to those long-range capabilities.
All of this could be a prelude to the IDF shifting its focus from merely clearing southern Lebanon of Hezbollah's presence to also trying to truly get the longer-range rocket threat under control.
These new efforts come as the military also faces increased time pressure to succeed in restoring security for 60,000 northern border residents as Lebanon's mountainous winter and the November 5 US presidential election both bear down on the timing calculus.
Invasion at its beginning
Separately, the IDF announced on Wednesday that since IDF Division 36 joined the invasion of Lebanon on October 2, it has destroyed around 500 Hezbollah targets and killed around 150 operatives.
IDF sources said that Division 36 is moving at a rapid pace in clearing areas of southern Lebanon of Hezbollah's weapons and military positions.
Although most of where Division 36 is operating is still classified, last week, the IDF publicized that Division 36 assisted the air force in an operation against Hezbollah fighters at Bint Jbeil.
The IDF has found and destroyed very large quantities of high-quality anti-tank missiles, including Kornet missiles, tunnels, and a variety of other weapons.
Part of the stunning story in the southern Lebanon invasion to date has been that the IDF has only suffered one major ambush.
Following the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which saw numerous Hezbollah ambushes of IDF invading forces, many observers have been surprised that the IDF has not suffered greater losses.
IDF sources attributed what so far has been a much better result, as compared to 2006, to a mix of the air force and artillery hitting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for a year, along with the intense ramping up of strikes throughout Lebanon starting in mid-September last month.
These strikes not only killed the Hezbollah high command strategists across Lebanon but also, more specifically, most of the lower-level tactical commanders in southern Lebanon.
At the same time, the IDF said the invasion, now in its 10 day, is still only at its beginning – that despite some senior IDF officials still suggesting it may be over within weeks.
To that extent, the IDF believes that over time, it will also dramatically reduce Hezbollah’s rocket fire on the Israeli home front.
While in the early days of the invasion, the news focus was on the fact that Hezbollah had failed to fire thousands of rockets per day at Israel, as the invasion had drawn out without a clear end date, more attention was focused on daily injuries and some deaths from Hezbollah rocket fire.
Around one third of the country has been in virtual lock down now for several weeks with no active negotiations about ceasefire terms.
'They will not know what happened'
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said that the IDF's counter-strike on Iran for its October 1 massive strike on Israel will put the original attack to shame.
He said: "The Iranian attack was aggressive, but inaccurate. In contrast, our attack will be deadly, pinpoint accurate, and most importantly surprising - they will not know what happened or how it happened. They will just see the results."
Speaking to IDF Intelligence Unit 9900, the defense minister said that much of Israel's air supremacy in the Middle East is due to their intelligence collection work.
He noted the unit's efforts against Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and any other necessary front to help the air force see "very precisely and in every place what we want to."
On Tuesday, The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel is not expected to attack Iran's nuclear program, but rather to focus on various kinds of military bases and intelligence sites, following a New York Times report on the issue.
Confronted with The New York Times report, sources did not deny the thrust of the report which predicted that Israel's retaliation against Iran for its massive October 1 strike on the Jewish state would fall more in the medium range of attack scenarios.
Further, the Post understands that Israel's attack on Iran - which virtually all top Israeli officials have publicly promised – will still be much more substantial than its narrower retaliation on April 19, when Iran's S-300 anti aircraft missile system was damaged.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have both presented removing the Iranian nuclear threat from hovering over Jerusalem's neck as one of the greatest purposes of their lives and time in public service.
If those officials and other members of the defense establishment have backed off from such an option in favor of attacking Iranian military and intelligence bases, such as possibly ballistic missile facilities, drone facilities, and commanders who coordinated the strikes on Israel, it would mark a dramatic shift toward directly emphasizing Gaza and Lebanon as bigger security issues than Iran.