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Hezbollah Missiles Hit Haifa, Israel Steps up Bombings in South Lebanon

Smoke billows near buildings, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, October 7, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke billows near buildings, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, October 7, 2024. (Reuters)
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Hezbollah Missiles Hit Haifa, Israel Steps up Bombings in South Lebanon

Smoke billows near buildings, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, October 7, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke billows near buildings, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, October 7, 2024. (Reuters)

Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel's third largest city Haifa on Monday as Israeli forces looked poised to expand ground raids into south Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, which has spread conflict across the Middle East.

Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, the Palestinian armed group fighting Israel in Gaza, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with "Fadi 1" missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.

Hezbollah said it targeted areas north of Haifa in a second salvo of missiles later in the day. Israel's military said around 135 projectiles had entered Israeli territory on Monday as of 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). Ten people were reported injured in the Haifa area and two others further south in central Israel.

The military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon, and that two Israeli soldiers were killed in border-area combat, taking the military death toll inside Lebanon so far to 11.

It said it also carried out a targeted strike in Beirut's southern suburbs, where a thick plume of smoke could be seen.

Lebanon's health ministry said 10 firefighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a municipal building in the border-area town of Bint Jbeil, and that other aerial attacks on Sunday killed 22 people in a swathe of southern and eastern towns.

The spiraling conflict has raised concerns that the United States, Israel's superpower ally, and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing Middle East.

Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1. Israel has said it will retaliate and is weighing its options. One possible target is Iran's oil facilities.

ROCKETS HIT HAIFA

An Israeli military statement said five rockets were launched towards Haifa, also a major Mediterranean port, from Lebanon and interceptors were fired at them. "Fallen projectiles were identified in the area. The incident is under review."

It said 15 other rockets were fired inland at Tiberias in Israel's northern Galilee region, some of which were shot down. Israel media said five more rockets hit the Tiberias area later.

Israel also intercepted two drones launched early on Monday from the east after sirens blared in the central areas of Rishon Lezion and Palmachim, the military said.

Hamas, which triggered the Gaza war with a surprise attack on Israel a year ago, meanwhile targeted Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv with a missile salvo, the group said, setting off sirens in central areas of the country.

Many Israelis have regained confidence in their long-vaunted military and intelligence apparatus after a series of deadly blows to the command structure of Hezbollah, Iran's most formidable Middle East proxy force, in Lebanon in recent weeks.

"Our counterattack on our enemies in Iran's axis of evil is necessary for securing our future and ensuring our security," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a special cabinet meeting in Jerusalem marking the Gaza war anniversary.

"We are changing the security reality in our region, for our children's sake, for our future, to ensure that what happened on Oct. 7 does not happen again," Netanyahu said.

Beirut's densely populated southern suburbs were again pounded by airstrikes overnight as Israel extended an aerial campaign on the area where Hezbollah has its headquarters.

Israel accuses the movement of deliberately embedding its command centers and weaponry beneath residential buildings in the heart of Beirut. Hezbollah denies storing weapons among civilians.

Israeli airstrikes have displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon and as the bombing campaign intensifies, many are afraid their country will face the vast scale of destruction wrought on Gaza by Israel's air and ground onslaught there.

ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH CONFLICT SPREADS

Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023 in solidarity with Hamas. After a year of exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel mostly limited to the frontier region, the conflict has significantly escalated in Lebanon.

Israel has carried out ground incursions into Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated south, which Hezbollah says it has repelled.

Israelis marked the first anniversary of the Hamas attack with ceremonies and protests on Monday including a memorial event for victims of the Nova Music Festival where militants killed 364 people and kidnapped 44 partygoers and staff.

In their attack through Israeli towns and kibbutz villages near the Gaza border a year ago, Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

The huge security lapse led to the single deadliest day for Jews since the Nazi Holocaust, shattered many citizens' sense of security and sent their faith in its leaders to new lows.

The Hamas assault unleashed an Israeli offensive on Gaza that has largely flattened the densely populated enclave and killed almost 42,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say.

The Gaza war has given rise to a multi-front Middle East conflict, drawing in Iran's broader "Axis of Resistance" - Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis, Iraqi militia groups - and sparking several rare, direct confrontations between Israel and Iran.

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Arab World

Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
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Israel’s Retaliatory Responses to Houthis Must Begin by Drawing Intelligence Plan

A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)
A person inspects damage at the site where a projectile fired from Yemen landed in Tel Aviv on December 21, 2024 (EPA)

Israel is considering options to respond to repeated attacks fired from Yemen in the past few days, the latest of which was a Houthi missile strike that injured more than a dozen people in Tel Aviv.
But military experts say Israel should first consider an intelligence plan for confronting the new front after it faced significant difficulties in both defending against and responding to the Houthi attacks.
On Saturday morning, Houthis launched a missile that triggered sirens throughout central Israel at 3:44 am. It was the second attack since Thursday.
Israel's military said the projectile landed in Tel Aviv's southern Jaffa area, adding that attempts to intercept a missile from Yemen failed.
“The incident is still being thoroughly investigated,” the army said, adding that following initial investigations by the Israeli Air Force and Home Front Command, “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, both regarding interception and early warning.”
Israeli military experts say the recent Houthi attacks have revealed serious security gaps in Israel's air defense systems.
“The pressing question now is why none of the other of Israel’s air defense layers managed to intercept the warhead,” wrote Yedioth Ahronoth's Ron Ben-Yishai. “The likely explanation is the late detection and the flat trajectory, which prevented the operation of all available defense apparatus.”
He said these incidents might expose a critical vulnerability in the army’s air defense system protecting Israel’s civilian and military home front.
According to Ben-Yishai, two main reasons might explain Saturday’s interception failure.
The first is that the missile was launched in a “flattened” ballistic trajectory, possibly from an unexpected direction.
As a result, Israeli defenses may not have identified it in time, leading to its late discovery and insufficient time for interceptors to operate.
He said the second, and more likely scenario is that Iran has developed a maneuverable warhead.
Such a warhead separates from the missile during the final third of its trajectory and maneuvers mid-flight—executing pre-programmed course changes—to hit its designated target, he wrote.
And while Israel has launched initial investigations into the failure of Israeli defense systems to intercept the missiles, it is now examining the nature, date and location of its response.
When Houthis launched their first missile attack on Israel last Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned them, saying, “The Houthis will learn the hard way.”
But Israeli political analyst Avi Ashkenazi wrote in the Maariv newspaper that Israel should look at reality with open eyes and say out loud that it cannot deal with the Houthi threat from Yemen, and has failed to face them.
Last Thursday, 14 Israeli Air Force fighter jets, alongside refuelers and spy planes, flew some 2,000 kilometers and dropped over 60 munitions on Houthi “military targets” along Yemen’s western coast and near the capital Sanaa.
The targets included fuel and oil depots, two power stations, and eight tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.
But the Maariv newspaper warned about the increasing involvement of Iran in supporting the Houthi forces.
“Iran has invested more in the Houthis in recent weeks following the collapse of the Shiite axis, making the Houthi movement a leader of this axis,” the newspaper noted.
Underscoring the failures of Israel’s air defense systems, Maariv said the “Arrow” missile defense system, Israel's main line of defense against ballistic missiles, had failed four times in a row to intercept missiles, including three launched from Yemen and one from Lebanon.
Yedioth Ahronoth's Ben-Yishai also warned that the threat posed by maneuvering warheads on Iran's heavy, long-range missiles would become existential for Israel should Iran succeed in developing nuclear warheads for these missiles.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Channel 12 said that in recent months, the Middle East has changed beyond recognition.
The channel said that for the first time in more than half a century, a direct and threat-free air corridor has been opened to Iran through the Middle East. Israel will benefit from this corridor to launch almost daily attacks on the border crossings between Syria and Lebanon, it said.
Channel 12 also reported that according to the Israeli military, the new threat-free corridor will help Israel launch a future attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
“From Israel's perspective, the fall of the Assad regime and the collapse of the Iranian ring of fire are changing the balance of power in the Middle East,” the report added.