Sirens didn’t sound
Hezbollah drone kills four Israeli soldiers
October 14, 2024, 7:06 a.m
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Israeli air defenses can normally intercept the vast majority of missiles from Lebanon. A Hezbollah drone still reaches its target. Four soldiers die in the attack on an army base south of Haifa.
Four soldiers were killed in a drone attack by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia on an Israeli army base near the city of Binjamina. As the army announced that night, seven other soldiers were seriously injured. According to emergency services, more than 60 people were injured in the attack on Sunday. This makes it one of the bloodiest attacks on Israel since the Gaza war began just over a year ago.
The warning sirens had not blared before the attack. “We will investigate how a drone can enter and hit a base without warning,” Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced in a statement shortly after midnight, according to media. Binyamina is located between the northern Israeli city of Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack. An Israeli military training camp in Binjamina was attacked with a “squadron of attack drones”. Israel’s radar systems did not detect the sophisticated drones, Hezbollah announced on Telegram that night. The Shiite militia threatened Israel with even more violent attacks if the neighboring state did not stop its offensive in Lebanon – and that “what he experienced today in the south of Haifa is just a small foretaste of what awaits him when he decides to continue its aggression against our noble and beloved people”.
According to an initial investigation, Hezbollah launched two kamikaze drones from Lebanon that entered Israeli airspace from the sea, the Times of Israel reported. Both drones were detected by radar and one was shot down off the coast north of Haifa. Planes and helicopters tracked the second drone, but it disappeared from the radar. No sirens sounded because it was assumed that the drone had crashed or been intercepted, the newspaper reported. The drone eventually landed near Binjamina.
USA sends THAAD system
Israeli army spokesman Hagari urged the public not to spread rumors about the attack 60 kilometers north of Tel Aviv until the facts were clear, according to the Times of Israel. “We are obliged to ensure better protection,” he was quoted as saying. “We will investigate this incident, learn from it and improve.”
In order to strengthen Israel’s air defense after recent heavy missile attacks by Iran, the United States is sending a battery of the state-of-the-art missile defense system THAAD and an associated US military team to Israel. The move underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, the US Department of Defense said. In view of the escalating Middle East conflict, the USA had already relocated a missile defense system battery to the region last year, but not to Israel itself.
Meanwhile, according to the Israeli army, Hezbollah fired rockets again into northern Israel during the night. Accordingly, the air defense successfully intercepted around five projectiles coming from Lebanon. Warning sirens had previously sounded in the Bay of Haifa and surrounding communities. According to the Times of Israel, the explosions of defensive shells could be seen in the night sky over Haifa.
According to the Israeli army, Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, has deliberately set up its positions in southern Lebanon near posts of the UN peacekeeping mission Unifil. Last month, about 25 rockets were fired at Israeli communities and troops from Hezbollah positions near such UN posts. Two soldiers were killed in one of these attacks. In limited and “targeted” operations, Israeli troops encountered underground weapons caches just “a few dozen to a few hundred meters” from Unifil posts, it said. Over the years, Hezbollah has deliberately built up its attack infrastructure near UN peacekeeping mission positions.
Israel attacks Hamas command center
After UN peacekeepers were fired upon during clashes between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged restraint. Unifil troops’ personnel and posts should never be targeted, he said through a spokesman: “Attacks on peacekeepers violate international law, including international humanitarian law. They could constitute a war crime.” Responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to withdraw Unifil troops from combat areas, Guterres said the peacekeeping force would remain at its bases there.
Meanwhile, Israel’s air force said it again attacked a command center of Hamas, which is allied with Hezbollah, in the Gaza Strip. The army said on Telegram that night that she was in the center of the sealed-off coastal strip in a building that had previously served as a hospital. According to Palestinian reports, several people were killed and several tents caught fire. Neither this information nor that of the Israeli army could be independently verified.
The second round of polio vaccinations is scheduled to begin in the Gaza Strip today. According to the UN, around 590,000 children under the age of ten are to be vaccinated. Israel and the UN organizers agreed on area-specific humanitarian ceasefires. The polio vaccinations must be administered in two doses; a first round was given at the beginning of September. In the summer, the first case of polio in 25 years was discovered in the sealed-off Palestinian territory, much of which was devastated in the Gaza war.