Hezbollah targets critical Israeli base

The Lebanon-based militants claimed that the attack caused “direct hits and injuries” at a surveillance facility

Hezbollah announced on Saturday that it had fired 62 missiles at an Israeli air surveillance base near the Lebanese border. The barrage was an “initial response” to the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut earlier this week, the Lebanese militants declared.

Incoming rocket alerts sounded across northern Israel on Saturday as dozens of missiles struck the base atop Mount Meron, the highest summit in Israeli territory outside the Golan Heights. The base is home to a radar station and surveillance apparatus used to direct Israeli warplanes over Lebanon and parts of Syria, and to intercept communications from both countries.

“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri…the Islamic resistance targeted the Meron air control base with 62 missiles of various types,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The Lebanese paramilitary group described the Meron base as “the sole center for administration, monitoring, and air control in the north of the usurping entity [Israel],” without which Israel has “no viable alternative.”

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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that 40 missiles were fired at the base. It didn’t state whether the barrage caused any casualties, while Hezbollah said that it had caused “confirmed direct hits and injuries.” The IDF stated that it launched airstrikes on launch sites in southern Lebanon in response.

Video footage shared on social media purportedly showed a number of missiles impacting the base, as well as dense black smoke rising from several points on the mountaintop after the barrage.