(JNS) Hezbollah launched a heavy barrage of 60 rockets from Lebanon at northern Israel on Wednesday, May 15, in the terrorist group’s first response since an overnight IAF strike that killed a senior commander.
The IDF was striking Jabal al Baba in Southern Lebanon in response to the large volley, which mostly targeted the Mount Meron air traffic control base.
“The air defense fighters successfully intercepted several launches. There was minor damage and there were no casualties,” the IDF spokesperson said. Around 60 rockets were detected crossing into Israeli territory, the military said.
Air raid sirens sounded in many localities in the Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border as a result of the attack. Hezbollah said it was a “reaction to yesterday’s assassination” of senior field commander Hussain Ibrahim Mekky.
There were no immediate reports of injuries. The Upper Galilee Regional Council said strikes were detected in an open area near Moshav Margaliot and near Kibbutz Bar’am and Mount Meron. A fire broke out in the Bar’am area.
Mekky was killed near Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, around 12 miles north of the Israeli border. He was a senior field Hezbollah commander on the southern front who had previously served as head of its forces in the coastal region.
He “was responsible for the planning and execution of numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and territory since the start of the war,” the IDF said.
Hezbollah has carried out near-daily attacks on northern Israel since joining the war against the Jewish state in support of Hamas following the Gaza-based terrorist group’s massacre of some 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7.
Israel has threatened a major military offensive in southern Lebanon to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River—some 18 miles from the border—if a diplomatic solution is not found.
Efforts to calm tensions, including those of the United States and France, have so far been unsuccessful.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah met with a Hamas delegation in Beirut recently to discuss the Gaza war.
In the meeting with the Hamas delegation led by Khalil al-Hiya, the deputy of the organization’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, Nasrallah stressed the importance of a unified front.
