GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 373

Hezbollah In The Crosshairs

Hezbollah Strike Deadly

While Hezbollah has been the subject of devastating strikes by Israel over the past few weeks, they can still strike with what they have left and they did so today as we learn in a report from The Jerusalem Post:

A Hezbollah drone struck the Binyamina area on Sunday evening, wounding around 67 people, with four potentially mortally wounded, according to Magen David Adom and the IDF.

Questions abound on just how Hezbollah was able to get the drone past Israel’s defenses, but this drone strike apparently snuck through as the terrorists also attacked with rockets that took the attention of the missile defense systems:

The drone was sent from Lebanon under the cover of a Hezbollah rocket barrage.

The IDF did see the drones and took one of the two out, but one got through:

Two drones were launched toward Israel, with one shot down over sea, but one of the drones penetrated deep into Israel, crashing in the Binyamina area. No warning sirens were activated, which the IDF will be probing.

As the report progressed we started to get more details:

Later, Army Radio reported the following updates:

"New details have emerged from the preliminary investigation into the drone strike in the Wadi Ara area:

The Air Force is investigating whether the drone that triggered alarms in the Nahariya and Acre area at 6:45 PM is the same one that exploded in Wadi Ara about half an hour later, around 7:15 PM. Since contact with the drone was lost after it crossed over Nahariya and Acre, there's a possibility it's the same device. Hezbollah reportedly launched 'two or three drones simultaneously' during the incident. One of them was intercepted by the Navy over the sea.

Another puzzling thing is why early warning systems weren’t triggered:

Contrary to earlier reports, the drone was not detected by detection systems, did not trigger any alarms, and no interception attempts were made. "The alarm that sounded at 7:00 PM in Talmei Elazar, near the impact site, was unrelated to the drone incident and was caused by the interception of a ballistic missile launched from Lebanon at the time."

How many people were affected? Here is what the article tells us:

MDA reported that four people were critically wounded, five were seriously wounded, and 14 were moderately wounded.

Three of the wounded individuals were evacuated by helicopter to Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, and another two were taken to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

Aggregating all the various reports I read it looks like 4 people have been killed and 67 injured. Israel for its part continues to strike back:

Meanwhile, the IDF announced on Sunday that it had carried out 200 air strikes against Hezbollah targets across Lebanon over the last 24 hours. Concurrently, the military stated that it maintained four divisions destroying the terror group's south Lebanon infrastructure but was still failing to reduce rocket fire on the home front substantially.

Netanyahu Calls For UN Evacuation

As the IDF pushes deeper and deeper into south Lebanon it is very obvious that Hezbollah is stationed either inside UN facilities or right next to them causing the PM to call for the UN to leave these offices and buildings until it is safe to return as we are told in a report from The Times Of Israel:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the United Nations to immediately pull its peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon from areas where Israel is battling Hezbollah, saying that the terror group is using the international troops as “human shields.”

The call for these soldiers to leave for a time also comes as the IDF inadvertently entered one of the UN facilities:

Netanyahu’s comments came as the UN peacekeeping force said two Israel Defense Forces tanks had entered a United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon position Sunday. The IDF said that the incident took place during an attempt to evacuate wounded IDF soldiers under fire.

Even as the PM urged the forces to move out of harms way, the UN is resisting that request:

In urging that members of UNIFIL be moved out of harm’s way, Netanyahu said that previous similar pleas by Israel had been refused, despite a rising number of injuries to UNIFIL troops.

The international force has already said that it will stay put.

Netanyahu made his case rather plainly:

Addressing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Netanyahu said in a Hebrew-language message, “It is time for you to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the areas of combat.”

“The IDF has repeatedly asked for this, and has been met with repeated refusals, all aimed at providing a human shield to Hezbollah terrorists,” he added.

“Mr. Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately,” Netanyahu said in English.

the UN remained defiant:

UNIFIL said the Israeli military “deliberately” hit several UNIFIL posts, including the headquarters at Naqoura. At least five UNIFIL soldiers have been lightly injured in a spate of recent incidents that have also included shootings that the UN did not attribute to either Israel or Hezbollah.

Netanyahu continued to make his case though:

“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said. “This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers.”

Netanyahu said Israel “regrets the injury” to the peacekeepers, and that it is doing whatever it can to prevent such incidents.

“But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is just get them out of the danger zone,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister said that European leaders should be criticizing Hezbollah, not Israel, for using UNIFIL as a “human shield.”

If the UN refuses to move their troops they will be killed as the IDF needs to demilitarize the area to make good on their promise to allow the residents of north Israel to safely return to the area. We all know what is going to happen if Israel does destroy the weapons and that is they will be the seen as war criminals and genocidal. Israel sounds like they warned people and now they’ll do what they have to do. This situation is going to get ugly sooner than later.