As sirens sounded across northern Israel on Wednesday, Israeli army radio said that around 150 rockets had been launched from Lebanon in an apparent response to the Israeli strike. Hezbollah claimed attacks on a string of military bases, including on Mount Meron, an area housing a military radar station that is roughly five miles south of the border. Hezbollah also claimed to have struck an arms factory belonging to Plasan, a manufacturer of armored vehicles used by the Israeli military.
The military said in a statement that a number of the rockets had been intercepted, but that several had hit the ground and started fires, which firefighters were working to extinguish. It said it had responded on Wednesday by striking a number of launch sites across the border. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported heavy Israeli airstrikes and bombardment across the country’s south.
The blazes came a week after another Hezbollah rocket attack set off wildfires that prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a threat of “very intense action” along the Lebanese border.
On a visit to Qatar as part of a wider Middle East trip, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said he believed neither side would welcome a larger war. Mr. Blinken called it “safe to say that actually no one is working to start a war, or to have escalation,” and that “there’s a strong preference for a diplomatic solution.”
He added that the best way to calm tensions along Lebanon’s border with Israel would be a cease-fire in Gaza, which he said would “take a tremendous amount of pressure out of the system” and remove Hezbollah’s claimed justification for attacking Israel.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had struck a Hezbollah command and control center, killing Mr. Abdallah and three other Hezbollah fighters. It called Mr. Abdallah one of Hezbollah’s top commanders in southern Lebanon.
Israel has been targeting Hezbollah commanders with the aim of pushing the group north of the Litani River in Lebanon, hoping to prevent cross-border attacks and to eventually allow tens of thousands of Israeli civilians displaced by the fighting to return to their homes. Some experts have expressed skepticism about whether the targeted killings can accomplish this aim.
Lebanon’s government has said that as many as 100,000 people on its side of the border have been displaced.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Hwaida Saad and Michael Crowley contributed reporting.
