Israel sending more troops to border with Lebanon as hostilities mount against Hezbollah

Israeli military officials are calling up two reserve brigades of combat troops that will go to northern Israel as the war escalates against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

The deployment comes after Hezbollah launched a Qader 1 ballistic missile at Tel Aviv early Wednesday that the terrorist group said was aimed at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. Hezbollah blames Mossad for a wave of attacks last week in which bombs hidden inside pagers and walkie-talkies killed dozens of its top commanders and a score of bystanders.

“This will enable the continuation of combat against the Hezbollah terrorist organization, the defense of the state of Israel, and create the conditions to enable residents of northern Israel to return to their homes,” officials with the Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday on their Telegram social messaging page.

Also Wednesday, Israel announced attacks on 60 targets in Lebanon that it said are connected to Hezbollah’s intelligence directorate.

“The strikes destroyed intelligence-gathering tools, command centers and additional infrastructure used by the enemy to build an intelligence situational assessment,” IDF officials said.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said Hezbollah fighters have fired 9,000 rockets, missiles and armed drones at communities inside Israel since Oct. 8 — the day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages.

“For years, Hezbollah has been planning to do in northern Israel what Hamas did in southern Israel — invade Israel, infiltrate civilian communities and massacre innocent civilians,” Adm. Hagari said Monday. 

On Friday, the IDF launched what officials called a precise strike on senior Hezbollah officials in Lebanon who were planning an attack against northern Israel similar to the one carried out from the Gaza Strip.

“To make sure that Hezbollah can’t carry out such an attack, and in order to enable all 60,000 Israelis to safely return back to their homes in northern Israel, we must act against this threat,” Rear Adm. Hagari said. “This threat is just a few hundred meters away from the communities and families in northern Israel.”