A senior Hezbollah commander responsible for a series of drone attacks across northern Israel since Oct. 7 was ironically taken out by a drone strike, according to reports.
Ali Hussein Barji, chief of Hezbollah’s aerial forces in southern Lebanon, was killed Tuesday in an explosion in the town of Khirbet Selm, where members of the Iranian-backed terror group were attending the funeral of senior officer Wissam al-Tawil, the Times of Israel reported.
Barji was believed to have been the mastermind behind the drone attacks that have plagued northern Israel since the Lebanese terrorists with Hezbollah launched their own assault on the Jewish state in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Those attacks included a strike against the Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Command headquarters in Safed on Tuesday — before Barji died the same day.
The key Israeli base was hit with an explosives-laden drone, with Hezbollah claiming responsibility for the attack in response to al-Tawil’s death Monday, as well as the killing of Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut last week.
The IDF said the attack on the Safed base triggered rocket sirens across multiple cities in northern Israel. The Israeli military said there were no casualties in Tuesday’s attacks.
The IDF did not comment on the drone strike that killed Barji.
But the Israeli military did acknowledge that it carried out a series of airstrikes against Hezbollah on Tuesday morning across southern Lebanon.
The IDF confirmed that a Hezbollah drone-launching squad was taken out before it could carry out its own attack against the Jewish state.
Along with Barji, Hezbollah confirmed that three other members were killed Tuesday when an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle in the town of Ghandouriyeh, according to Reuters.
The Iranian-backed terror group identified the slain members as Sharif Sayyid Nasser, Issa Ali Nour a-Din and Hassan Abdel Hussein Ismail.
Israel and Hezbollah have remained in heated conflict since the terror group began launching attacks across the border in October in a show of support for its Palestinian terrorist ally, Hamas.
Now the attacks, combined with the ongoing war in Gaza, threaten to throw the entire region into conflict, warned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet Tuesday.
Netanyahu has threatened to go to war in south Lebanon if Hezbollah does not stop its attacks against the Jewish state, with about 80,000 residents displaced in northern Israel by the constant rocket fire.
At least nine IDF soldiers have been killed so far as a result of the fighting with Hezbollah, the Israeli military said.
Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said in a televised statement Tuesday that the terror group would like to avoid war in Lebanon, “but if Israel expands, the response is inevitable to the maximum extent required to deter Israel.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told the UN onTuesday that war needed to be avoided between Israel and Hezbollah and that his nation is willing to work with the Jewish state in order to promote stability in the region rather than a second war.
With Post wires
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