The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a cross-border drone and missile attack in northern Israel on Wednesday that the Israeli military said had injured 14 soldiers, six of them severely.
It was one of the most damaging attacks in recent months by Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, in its continuing clashes with Israel. The attack came a day after Israel’s targeted killing of two Hezbollah commanders as fears continue to grow of a broader conflict between Israel and Tehran, which mounted a wide aerial attack on Israel over the weekend.
An internal Israeli army memo said an initial investigation found that Hezbollah had fired two anti-tank rockets at an Israeli Bedouin border village, Arab al-Aramshe, before dispatching an exploding drone. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the memo.
A senior Israeli defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operational issues, expressed concern about Hezbollah’s apparent ability to determine soldiers’ whereabouts and subsequently target them.
Hezbollah said its attack on the village was in response to the Israeli airstrikes a day earlier that Israel’s military said had killed the commanders. Those strikes triggered a series of retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli military bases and barracks.
Hezbollah claimed that the target on Wednesday was an Israeli military reconnaissance unit. The military said that six soldiers had been severely injured, two moderately injured and six lightly injured. It said it had responded to the attack with strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
Later on Wednesday, Lebanese state media reported an Israeli strike deep inside Lebanon in the Bekaa Valley, a bastion of support for Hezbollah that straddles the Syrian border. The Israeli military said its fighter jets had hit “significant” Hezbollah infrastructure.
For more than six months, Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in a tense cross-border conflict set off by the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that was led by Hamas, another of Iran’s proxy groups. The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border, and in recent months Israeli strikes on Lebanon have begun to creep deeper into the country’s interior.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said that aircraft had eliminated Ismail Yusaf Baz, who it claimed was the commander of Hezbollah’s coastal sector, and Muhammad Hussein Mustafa Shechory, who it said was a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit. Mr. Baz “served as a senior and veteran official in several positions of Hezbollah’s military wing,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
The funeral for the two men took place on Wednesday in southern Lebanon, with their coffins — draped in Hezbollah’s yellow and green flag — carried through the streets by jostling crowds.
Before the targeted strikes on Tuesday, Hezbollah claimed to have also used explosive drones to target Iron Dome platforms in Beit Hillel, a border town in northern Israel. Israel’s Iron Dome system is one of the country’s key missile defense systems and proved instrumental in shielding it from Iran’s drone and missile attack over the weekend.
Nascent U.S.-led diplomatic efforts remain underway to end the fighting along the Lebanese-Israeli border. But Hezbollah has consistently made clear that it will not enter into any diplomatic talks until Israel ends its war on Gaza.
Aaron Boxerman, Johnatan Reiss and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
