Hezbollah drone strike kills 4 Israeli soldiers on military base

A drone strike by Hezbollah on a military base in the north of Israel killed four soldiers and wounded dozens of other people, the Israeli military said Sunday.

The strike on the base in Binyamina, a town in the Haifa district, was interpreted in Israel not just as a show of resilience by Hezbollah but also as evidence of a worrisome gap in Israeli air defense systems. Hezbollah said it had launched a “swarm of attack drones” over the border into Israel.

“We are studying and investigating the incident — how a drone infiltrated without warning and struck the base,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson. “We must provide better defense.”

Over the past week, Israel has intensified its assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon, inflicting heavy bombardments around the capital, in southern Lebanon, and elsewhere. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours. But the airstrikes and ground invasion, which began two weeks ago, have so far failed to accomplish their stated goal: preventing cross-border attacks by the militants.

On Sunday, sirens warning of incoming rocket fire sounded across northern Israel, with Israel’s military saying that Hezbollah had fired around 115 rockets or missiles as of 3 p.m. local time.

Concern about further attacks on Israel, which is also at war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, prompted the United States to announce Sunday that it was sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, and 100 troops to operate it. That will put U.S. forces still closer to the war in the Middle East.

The Institute for the Study of War, a research group based in Washington, said in a new report that Hezbollah’s continued rocket attacks were aimed at undermining Israeli public support for the invasion of Lebanon, which came after a year of rocket exchanges.

Hezbollah began its rocket barrages more than a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.

As Israeli troops have moved into southern Lebanon this past week, they have found themselves at loggerheads with U.N. peacekeepers there to try to maintain a buffer zone.

In a new incident Sunday, Israeli tanks entered a U.N. peacekeeping base, drawing a protest from the U.N. mission, which said it had put the lives of its soldiers in danger.

The tank incursion came after days of criticism of Israeli forces over attacks that have wounded at least four peacekeepers in Lebanon.

The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, has been stationed in southern Lebanon for four decades, tasked with trying to keep the border area free of weaponry and military forces.

Early Sunday morning, the U.N. mission said, Israeli battle tanks showed up at one of its bases.

“While peacekeepers were in shelters, two IDF Merkava tanks destroyed the position’s main gate and forcibly entered the position,” it said in a statement, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. Israeli soldiers, it said, requested multiple times that the base turn out its lights.

While no peacekeepers were hurt, the entry of Israeli forces onto a U.N. base risked undermining its neutral status and making it a target for Hezbollah. It said the tanks left 45 minutes later after the mission filed a protest.

The Israeli military said that the incident happened as its forces were trying to evacuate troops who had come under Hezbollah missile fire. It was in contact with the U.N. mission throughout the incident, a military spokesperson, Nadav Shoshani, told reporters. He said the tank had not been “storming” the base.

Israel says that the peacekeeping force, which is largely observational, has failed to prevent Hezbollah from building up its military presence along the frontier and that the militants operate near the peacekeeping bases.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have called on the mission to pull back, and on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that demand in a message directed at the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres. “Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah,” Netanyahu said. “This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers.”

The prime minister said “we regret the harm” to the soldiers wounded in the earlier incidents. “We are doing our utmost to prevent such harm,” he said, “but the simplest and most obvious way to ensure this is simply to withdraw them from the danger zone.”

The U.N. force has rejected Israel’s calls to leave its positions in southern Lebanon, noting that its presence there is mandated by the U.N. Security Council. Guterres does not have authority over UNIFIL.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he had spoken Saturday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and “strongly emphasized the importance of ensuring the safety and security” of the peacekeepers, as well as of Lebanese forces.

In his own statement, Gallant said Sunday that “the incident involving UNIFIL troops” was being investigated and that Israel’s military “will continue to take measures to avoid harm to UNIFIL troops and peacekeeping positions.”

On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around “200 Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and southern Lebanon” over the past day as its soldiers clashed with Hezbollah militants in the southern part of the country.

The Lebanese Red Cross said overnight that it was responding to a “major strike” in the southern city of Nabatieh, posting an image on social media that showed flames and rubble. Lebanon’s civil defense said Sunday morning one person had been killed and four others wounded. Lebanon’s government said that at least 23 people had been killed over the past 24 hours.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, said Sunday that he had just visited Lebanon where teams from his organization were helping Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians affected by the fighting.

“The expansion of the war into Lebanon is taking us away from reaching a cease-fire needed for respite for civilians across the region,” he said on social media.

About a dozen Israeli troops have been killed during the current operation. On Sunday, the Israeli military said that two more soldiers had been severely wounded in combat. It also said that Israeli forces had captured a Hezbollah fighter in a tunnel during a raid in southern Lebanon.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.