Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group targeted an Israeli military intelligence base near Tel Aviv using drones as part of its major offensive against Israel on Sunday morning.
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Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that the “main target of the operation” was “Glilot, the main base of Israeli military intelligence” 110 kilometers from the border.
An Israeli army spokesman confirmed to AFP that this military intelligence base, which, according to Israeli media, houses the headquarters of Mossad and Israel's foreign intelligence, “was not affected.”
The Hezbollah leader also denied Israel's “false claims” about destroying missile launchers.
He stressed that “the statements that the resistance will launch 8,000 or 6,000 missiles and drones, and that it (Israel) thwarted that (…) are false claims.”
He explained that his powerful Islamic formation launched its major attack in two stages. Hezbollah first fired “340 Katyusha rockets” at eleven military targets in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.
He explained that the drones, which were launched from southern Lebanon, and also for the first time, according to him, from the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, on the border with Syria, targeted military targets deep inside.
He added that Hezbollah targeted, in addition to Gililot, the Ein Shemer air base, 70 kilometers from the border.
Israel said it thwarted a large-scale Hezbollah attack early Sunday by carrying out several strikes in Lebanon.
For its part, the Lebanese movement announced that it launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in revenge for the killing of one of its senior military leaders, Fouad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut on July 30.
Hassan Nasrallah suggested that this attack had ended: “If the result was satisfactory and the desired goals were achieved, then we will consider that the response” to Shukr’s assassination “has been completed,” he said.
