Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused “Iran’s ally Hezbollah” of having “attempted” to assassinate him and his wife after a drone targeted his private residence in Caesarea on Saturday. the center of the country, ensuring that they “will pay a high price”.
“Hezbollah, an ally of Iran which attempted to assassinate me and my wife today (Saturday) made a regrettable mistake,” responded Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement in English. “I say to the Iranians and their partners in the axis of evil: anyone who tries to harm the citizens of the State of Israel will pay a high price for it,” he added. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, for his part, castigated “Iran’s allies who attempted to assassinate” Benajmin Netanyahu, an attack which “showed the true face of Iran and the axis of Evil that ‘he leads’.
The Prime Minister’s Office said in the morning that a drone had been launched towards Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Caesarea, after the army announced that a drone from Lebanon had hit a “structure” there. coastal city in central Israel. “A drone was launched towards the Prime Minister’s house in Caesarea. The Prime Minister and his wife were not there and the incident caused no casualties,” Benjamin Netanyahu’s services said in a statement.
Northern Israel was the target of at least 115 projectiles launched from Lebanon on Saturday and alert sirens were activated in several cities, with the Lebanese Islamist movement claiming responsibility for shots on Haifa and Safed (north). A man has died after rocket debris fell on his car near Acre, according to Israeli emergency services.
This salvo of rockets led to two retaliatory strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, the stronghold of Hezbollah, according to a security source at AFP. The Israeli army claimed to have reached weapons caches and a command center of the Lebanese movement’s intelligence services.
Four people were also killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike on a town in eastern Lebanon, including the mayor of a neighboring village, according to the official Lebanese agency ANI.
Lebanese Hezbollah has been launching rockets and drones into northern Israel for a year in support of Palestinian Hamas, which carried out the unprecedented attack of October 7, 2023 against southern Israel from Gaza.
After a year of border exchanges of fire between the army and the pro-Iranian formation, Israel has been carrying out land operations in the border regions of southern Lebanon since the end of September, supported by a campaign of airstrikes. Hezbollah announced Thursday that it had entered a “phase of escalation” with Israel, with which it is now at open war.
