Hezbollah sends explosive drones, rocket barrage at Israel in biggest attack ever

Hezbollah said it launched "more than 200" rockets and a salvo of "explosive drones" at Israeli military positions Thursday, in one of its largest barrages, in response to a strike that killed a senior commander of the Iran-backed group.

A Hezbollah statement said that "as part of the response to the... assassination carried out by the enemy" in southern Lebanon's Tyre area on Wednesday, its fighters fired "more than 200 rockets of various types" at five Israeli bases across the border including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

The group later said that its fighters "carried out an aerial attack with a squadron of explosive drones" targeting eight Israeli bases across the border area including in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, "as part of the response to" Wednesday's strike.

Siren alerts for rocket and air attacks sounded meanwhile across Israeli areas bordering Lebanon and in the annexed Golan Heights.

The Israeli army said 17 alerts were sounded over 90 minutes in different parts of the northern region, from Nahariya in the west to the Golan in the east, amid increasing fears that cross-border clashes between Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel could escalate into an all-out war.

The Israeli military hit in response targets in south Lebanon.

It said in a statement that its forces were "striking launch posts in southern Lebanon", after "numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory".

Most were intercepted and "fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel", it added, while Israeli media reported that one soldier was killed in the Golan Heights.

Hezbollah later targeted other Israeli posts, including al-Marj, al-Baghdadi, and a post in the occupied Kfarshouba Hills with Burkan rockets.

Earlier on Thursday, Israeli artillery shelled the outskirts of al-Khiam and Kfarhamam while Hezbollah attacked Israeli soldiers in Kfar Blum in north Israel with Katyusha rockets, in retaliation to an Israeli strike on Shebaa that injured a civilian woman.

On Wednesday Hezbollah fired Falaq rockets with heavy warheads targeting the headquarters of the Israeli military's 769th Brigade in Kiryat Shmona, as well as 100 salvos of Katyusha rockets targeting the headquarters of Israel’s 210th division and the Kilaa air base in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, in response to the commander's killing.

Hezbollah launched rockets on northern Israel a day after a Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel in October, leading to limited clashes along the tense border.The attacks have since gradually escalated, with Hezbollah introducing new weapons in their attacks and Israel striking deeper into Lebanon.

Global diplomatic efforts have intensified in recent weeks to prevent escalating clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli military from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran.

Hezbollah maintains that it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Until then, it says it will continue with its attacks to pile pressure on Israel and the international community. Israeli officials have threatened to launch a larger military operation should Hezbollah not stop its attacks.

Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that Israel cannot expect the group's attacks to remain limited should it launch a military operation within Lebanon, even if it aims to keep the conflict below the threshold of all-out war. Allies, including thousands of Iran-backed militiamen in Iraq, have offered to join Hezbollah on the front lines.

Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon since October have killed over 450 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but the dead also include more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed since the war in Gaza began. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the tense frontier have been displaced in the monthslong war.

Hezbollah's retaliation comes a day after a senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, met with French President Emmanuel Macron’s Lebanon envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Paris, as part of his ongoing diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

French officials had invited Hochstein to the French capital to discuss the latest developments in their ongoing diplomatic scrambles, according to administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.