Israel presses on in Lebanon as Hezbollah rocket barrages rain down

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SASA, Israel – It’s a snapshot of a war that is only getting bigger: Thirty minutes after sunrise on Friday, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to run to bomb shelters in the bay of Haifa as Hezbollah militants across the border in Lebanon launched 20 rockets at northern Israel.

In Kiryat Yam, one of several cities north of Haifa, the work of Israel’s own missile defense shield could be seen over the city, neutralizing the enemy salvo. The intercepted rockets look like small puffs of white smoke in the air.

The attacks in the morning of October 4 were some of the 100 rockets launched at Israel during the day. The Israeli Defense Forces launched a ground offensive against Hezbollah on October 1 and has sent two divisions over the border to drive back the Iranian-backed militant group and end for good a months-long missile duel between the two sides.

The IDF said in a briefing on Friday that it had eliminated “250 terrorists,” including four Hezbollah battalion commanders and nine company commanders. The IDF estimates that of the 250 Hezbollah fighters it has killed, 100 have been eliminated in the 24 hours between October 3 and 4.

It’s a war that is visible from the northern border of Israel.

The IDF has set up checkpoints along many roads here to protect people from driving too close to the border. Since the new round of Middle East fighting began on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, the IDF says Hezbollah has launched more than 10,000 projectiles at Israel.

Hezbollah has been supporting Hamas and says it will only stop the attacks when Israel agrees to a cease-fire deal with the Palestinian militants in Gaza.

The daily attacks led Israel to strike harder at Hezbollah in late September. It carried out an airstrike killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27 and it killed sixteen Hezbollah commanders on September 20 in an airstrike in Beirut. The IDF has also pounded Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut over the past week.

In northern Israel, many communities near the Lebanese border are ghost towns. They were evacuated back in October 2023 when the Hezbollah attacks began.

In Kiryat Shmona, for instance, the streets are deserted. The once bustling city of some 20,000 has few visible residents. On one side street, two burned cars can be seen where a rocket scored a direct hit near a home.

In other areas in northern Israel, the war is ever present.

Near Kibbutz Sasa, a road winds its way near the Lebanese border. The IDF has set up concrete barriers to protect drivers from anti-tank missile fire, and a soldier warns those passing that the road is vulnerable to this type of fire.

In one area most of southern Lebanon is visible, such as the villages of Maroun al-Ras and Yaroun. Smoke billows from some areas here, and Israeli artillery fire reverberates in the background. In addition, rockets stream overhead. Many of the rockets are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.

Israel says its ground operation in Lebanon is designed to enable border residents to return safely to their homes. Around 60,000 Israelis remain displaced due to the fighting.

“Earlier this week, IDF troops began limited, localized, targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence in southern Lebanon,” the Israeli military said on October 4. “With fire and intelligence support from the divisions and the Northern Command, five battalion commanders, ten company commanders, and six platoon commanders were eliminated.”

Israel says two divisions are operating in Lebanon, the 98th Division and the 36th Division. These include commandos, paratroopers, two armored brigades and infantry. Nine soldiers were killed in the first three days of combat in Lebanon. Two additional soldiers were killed on October 3 in the Golan due to a drone attack from Iraq.

The IDF says that as part of the activity of the forces in Lebanon the soldiers are “eliminating terrorists entrenched in buildings and positions near the border. The forces are also locating and destroying weapon warehouses, ready-to-launch rocket launchers, and abandoned Hezbollah explosives.”

A total of 2,000 targets have been struck over four days of fighting, and Israeli military officials say they are finding a large amount of weaponry concealed by Hezbollah in civilian areas.

“Over the past 24 hours, the troops discovered rocket launcher munitions, anti-tank missiles, and rockets —- inside a residential home,” the IDF noted in one statement.

But it is far from a sense of normalcy, even with Israel’s military and intelligence successes in recent weeks. As the ground operation picks up pace, many people are avoiding driving in northern Israel. Restaurants and coffee shops are closed.

There are military checkpoints on many roads. In some fields Israeli tanks and armored vehicles can be seen. However, for the most part the sense is of quiet, punctuated by rocket fire and the explosions from rockets being intercepted overhead.