IDF says dozens of rockets came into Israel from Lebanon

The attack of a top Hezbollah leader on a democratically-controlled Gazan man killed in a walkie-talky attack

Israel’s bombing of an apartment building in Beirut that killed a top Hezbollah commander comes after back-to-back attacks on the Iran-backed militia, with mass explosions of wireless devices across Lebanon on Tuesday followed the next day by the explosion of numerous walkie-talkies owned by Hezbollah members across the country.

Hours later, the leader of Hamas’s political office, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed by an explosive device hidden in a guesthouse in Tehran where he was staying after he had attended the inauguration of Iran’s president. Iran vowed to retaliate for the attack, which it called a violation of its sovereignty. Israel did not confirm or deny involvement in that attack.

Hamas killed over a thousand people in an attack against Israel and took around 250 hostages. About 100 captives are still being held, around 50 of which are believed to be dead. Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed. It does not say how many were fighters, but women and children make up over half of the dead.

Iran’s nuclear program, terrorism and other attacks: A reminder to Lebanon, and what has Israel done in the recent economic crisis? (ARAF)

Israeli spies broke into the Tehran warehouse and got rid of a huge amount of incriminating documents about Iran’s nuclear program. Israel’s prime minister used documents to accuse Iran of lying for many years about its nuclear ambitions.

Israel’s Dimona complex, the heart of its never-acknowledged nuclear arms program in the Negev desert, was used as a testing ground for the Stuxnet computer worm. The program wiped out about a fifth of Iran’s nuclear facilities, which is needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

Other attacks were more likely to target individuals, while they appeared to cast a far wider net. Although Israel has not claimed responsibility for the device attacks, it has been blamed for other attacks. They include:

From 2010 to 2012, four people with links to Iran’s nuclear program were killed by hit men riding motorcycles. In one case, in 2010, an assassin attached a sticky bomb to a car door. In others, gunmen approached vehicles in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and fired through the window before speeding off.

In November 2020, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed by gunshots fired from a truck-mounted machine gun that had been attached to a remote-controlled robotic apparatus. Experts said the operation had taken months, and likely years, of planning.

ARAF: Yeah, we have to remember that Lebanon has been undergoing economic and other crisises (ph) for years, even before this. Lebanon’s Interior Minister has ordered security services to find a spy network that officials believe helped Israel carry out these attacks. At the same time, though, that people in the southern suburbs are mourning the dead, others were setting off fireworks last night over the harbor in wedding celebrations.

NPR Message to the U.S. and to Israel: The wake of the Hezbollah attacks and the death of the buried body of Ibrahim Kil

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Availability and accuracy may be different. The audio record is the authoritative record of NPR programming.

ARRAF: Qassem said after the pager attacks, they were actually in shock. Thousands of pagers exploded at the same time. And then the next day, walkie-talkies detonated, killing altogether more than 42 fighters and civilians and injuring about 3,500. He said that the attacks failed to turn people against Hezbollah. He also said retaliatory attacks today into Israel were just a small part of the revenge Hezbollah was planning. He said that the Israeli attacks created the next generation of fighters.

DETROW: Yeah. Meanwhile, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said today that the string of attacks in the last week was meant to send a message. How do you think Hezbollah would understand the message?

The language used in NAIM QasSEM: Through an interpreter. This is a nation that will not be defeated. But the United States, America, it is drowned. It is swamped from its head to toe in the aggression and the genocide with Israel.

ARRAF: It’s been a strange few days here. In the southern suburbs, where a building was destroyed on Friday, there are two days of funerals.

ARRAF: The latest just a few hours ago, the burial of the senior Hezbollah commander whom Israel says was the target of its Beirut airstrike. The founder of the group’s special operations unit, Ibrahim A Kil, was praised by Hezbollah’s undersecretary general. Qassem addressed the U.S. and its seemingly unconditional support for Israel in his address, which was broadcast live, including on Iranian state TV. He speaks through an interpreter.

Over 100 rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon early Sunday, with some landing in northern Haifa, as Israel and the Hezbollah militant group appeared to be heading towards all-out war following months of escalating tensions.

The sirens went off in the region after the rockets streaked over a wide area of northern Israel. The Israeli military said that rockets had been fired toward civilians, pointing that previous bombardments had mainly aimed at military targets.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated four people for shrapnel wounds, including a 76-year-old man who was moderately wounded near Haifa, where buildings were damaged and cars set on fire. It was not immediately clear if the damage was caused by a rocket or an Israeli interceptor.

Hezbollah began firing rockets in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas in Gaza a year ago, sparking a firefight with Israel. There are tens of thousands of people displaced on both sides of the frontier because of low-level fighting.

Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of Fadi 1 and Fadi 2 missiles in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, a new type of weapon the group has not used before.

The health minister of Lebanon said Saturday that at least seven women and three children were killed in the airstrike. He said there were more than 70 people injured including 15 who were hospitalized.

A government official said the strike was the deadliest since the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 and that 23 people were still missing.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the attack broke up the group’s chain of command while taking out Akil, who he said was responsible for Israeli deaths. He had been on the US’s most wanted list for a long time over his alleged involvement in a bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, as well as taking Americans and Germans hostage during the civil war in Lebanon.