Hezbollah announced that it hit an Israeli air base early on Saturday, December 6, 2023, with 62 rockets as a “preliminary response” to the killing of Hamas’ Deputy Chief, Saleh al-Arouri.
Saleh al-Arouri was killed on January 2, 2023, in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs of Dahiyeh. He was living in Lebanon at the time of his death.
The rocket attacks in northern Israel came a day after the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, warned that his group’s response to the killing of Hamas’ Deputy Chief would be “decided on the battlefield.”
Nasrallah said that the assassination changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, and warned that a response was “inevitable,” heightening fears of a regional escalation in fighting.
Speaking on Friday, December 5, 2023, Nasrallah said, “We cannot keep silent about a violation of this seriousness, because this means that all of our people will be exposed [to targeting].
“All of our cities, villages and public figures will be exposed,” he stated.
“The murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go without reaction and punishment,” he declared.
He added that the repercussions of silence would be “far greater” than the risks of retaliation.
Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group have been trading fire since the war in Gaza started in October last year.
The violence has largely been contained to the border area.
About 40 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel on Saturday, the Israeli military said.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that sirens sounded in the north and the rockets later crossed into the Meron area.
There were no reports of injuries. No rockets or drones were fired at other parts of northern Israel.
The IDF said that it attacked a “terrorist squad” in Lebanese territory that took part in the launches.
Later, the Israeli army claimed that it found weapons and military vests belonging to the elite squad of the Qassam Brigades, known as the Nukhba, in Gaza City.
In a post on X, the army said that the vests were found in a medical facility “concealed” in bags belonging to the UN refugee agency.
It also said its ground and aerial forces “eliminated numerous terrorists, destroyed tunnel shafts and a weapons storage facility” in Khan Younis.
122 Palestinians Killed, 256 Injured In 24 hours
According to Gaza’s health ministry, Israeli military attacks in Gaza have killed 122 Palestinians and injured a further 256 in the past 24 hours.
The ministry stated that this brings the total Palestinian death toll since October 7 to 22,722, with 58,166 injured.
A further 7,000 Palestinians are still missing.
Most people in the Gaza Strip are now taking shelter in UNRWA facilities, but they are not safe even there.
The UN agency disclosed that 1.4 million people are sheltered in its facilities, and “hundreds of thousands more” are in the vicinity.
Since October 7, at least 319 people have been killed while taking shelter in UNRWA facilities and many more have been injured in direct or partial hits by the Israeli army.
A historic 142 UN staff have also been killed, and 131 UNRWA installations have been damaged.
An overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza have also been displaced internally, with the latest report by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) putting the number at a staggering 85 percent at the end of 2023.
The 1.9 million internally displaced Palestinians include many who have been displaced multiple times, as families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety, which is guaranteed nowhere in the Strip.
Nearly 1.4 million of these internally displaced people are sheltering in 155 UNRWA facilities across all five governorates in the Strip. All the facilities are “far exceeding their intended capacity.”
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