Fighting on northern border reaches new heights as Hezbollah strikes IDF Northern Command HQ with drones

Israel and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah traded heavy blows in near-constant fighting throughout Tuesday, with Hezbollah striking the IDF’s Northern Command headquarters near Safed with two drones.

In a rare announcement of this kind, the Israeli army confirmed Hezbollah’s earlier claims to have struck the IDF base near the city of Safed in the Upper Galilee but added that no substantial damage was caused by the attack.

The Northern Command headquarters controls the IDF's activities across the nation's northern region, including the Lebanese and Syrian borders, and is responsible for directing the fighting against Hezbollah.

כטב"ם ששוגר מלבנון התפוצץ במפקדת פיקוד הצפון של צה"ל בצפת, אין נפגעים. חזבאללה: זו תגובה לחיסול מפקד כוח רדואן ועארורי@Doron_Kadosh pic.twitter.com/X0GI59Rbnm

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) January 9, 2024

Hezbollah said the attack came as a response to last week’s assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, and of senior Hezbollah commander Wissam al-Tawil in southern Lebanon yesterday.

The attack happened before noon amid several missile and rocket attacks against Israel along the northern border.

The IDF also bombed terrorist infrastructure in Kfar Kila earlier on Tuesday morning, and intercepted several rockets and numerous aerial targets following multiple drone invasions and rocket sirens.

Hezbollah continued to launch rockets, missiles, and drones at Israel throughout the day with unusually high intensity, while the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and artillery answered by striking targets in Lebanon.

In the afternoon, an airstrike hit a car traveling near the town of Khirbet Salam, where the funeral of Wissam al-Tawil, the senior commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces, was about to begin.

The target was Ali Hussein Burji, a senior commander of Hezbollah’s drone force in southern Lebanon, according to the Times of Israel. Israeli officials have not commented on reports that Israel was behind the strike.

Burji was responsible for launching dozens of drone attacks against Israel since the start of the fighting on the northern border, including the attack against the IDF's Northern Command, the Times of Israel reported.

In addition, Reuters reported that three more Hezbollah operatives were killed in a targeted drone strike on their car in the town of Ghandouriyeh after the IDF announced earlier that it had thwarted a drone squad on its way to attack Israel.

Hezbollah later confirmed their deaths and stated that the terror organization had suffered a total of 157 casualties due to the fighting with Israel.

The group’s second in command, Naim Kassem, reacted to the targeted strikes by saying that they “cannot fulfill the goals of Israel, but the opposite. They will collapse the goals of Israel.”

The Arabic news outlet al-Arabiya also reported on Tuesday that Hezbollah launched an attack against the Israeli gas rig “Karish” in the Mediterranean Sea but the report remained unconfirmed at the time of publication.