A Hezbollah drone attack on Sunday struck an Israeli military base near Binyamina, approximately 20 miles south of Haifa, killing four Israeli soldiers and wounding seven others, according to Israeli military officials.
This assault marks Hezbollah’s deadliest strike on Israel since the beginning of Israel’s ground operations in Lebanon nearly two weeks ago. The attack wounded a total of 61 people, Israel’s national rescue service reported.
Hezbollah announced that the assault was retaliation for an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. The organization claimed responsibility for targeting Israel’s elite Golani brigade, reportedly deploying multiple missiles to overwhelm Israel’s air defense systems and enable the drone attack. “Our squadrons of drones were a calculated strike against Israeli forces that shows our resilience,” a Hezbollah spokesperson said in a statement.
Following the attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited the scene on Monday, describing the event as a “difficult event with painful results.” He added, “This strike shows the severity of the threat we face from Hezbollah’s advanced capabilities.”
The conflict has intensified almost daily since the recent war in Gaza, prompting the U.S. to expand its support for Israel. The Pentagon announced that a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, along with around 100 U.S. troops, would be sent to Israel. This would mark only the second deployment of a THAAD battery to the Middle East, following a previous exercise in 2019.
According to Pentagon sources, the U.S. intends this deployment to reinforce Israel’s defensive capabilities amid the increasing threat from Hezbollah’s advanced Iranian-made drones, which have challenged Israel’s radar systems in the past year.
The violence has spread beyond Israel, impacting civilian areas in Lebanon and Gaza. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike reportedly struck the town of Aitou in northern Lebanon, killing 18 people and wounding four, according to the Lebanese Red Cross. “Our teams are providing first aid and evacuating the wounded,” the Red Cross posted on social media platform X.
In Gaza, an airstrike on Sunday hit a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school sheltering displaced civilians in the Nuseirat camp, killing at least 20 people. The shelter was also scheduled to serve as a vaccination center for Gaza’s polio campaign, set to begin on Monday.
