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Israel intercepted a Hizbollah missile aimed at the Tel Aviv area on Wednesday morning, triggering air raid sirens in the coastal city from the Lebanese militant group’s first ballistic missile attack on the country.
Hizbollah said the Qader 1 ballistic missile, which was launched after Israel’s intense bombardment of Lebanon killed more than 500 people this week, targeted the headquarters of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
The Israeli military said it had intercepted the ballistic missile, which is heavier, more destructive and longer range than the rockets Hizbollah usually fires at the country. It also claimed to have struck the launcher from which the missile was fired, located in the Nafakhiyeh area in southern Lebanon.
Israel is bracing for a step up in Hizbollah fire after it launched heavy raids on the militant group’s strongholds across Lebanon on Monday and Tuesday, pummelling its weapons stores and killing senior commanders. Israeli warplanes have hit more than 3,000 Hizbollah targets so far this week, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The escalating cross-border violence has sparked alarm that Israel and Hizbollah are heading for all-out war, triggering an exodus of residents from southern Lebanon in anticipation of further violence.
Lebanese authorities have put the death toll at 564 from the bombardment so far. This included a strike on a Hizbollah-controlled area of southern Beirut that killed the group’s missiles division chief Ibrahim Kobeissi on Tuesday.
Israel has pledged to continue the military action until 60,000 citizens displaced from northern areas by months of cross-border fire can return home. Hizbollah has been directing volleys of rockets at northern Israel since shortly after October 7 in support of Hamas in Gaza.
Hizbollah’s barrages have increased to about 100 to 200 rockets a day in response and the group has fired deeper into Israel than before. Most of its projectiles have so far been intercepted by Israel’s air defences, but the group is thought to have large stockpiles that it has not yet used.
More than 3,000 people were injured and 37 were killed across Lebanon last week when Hizbollah’s communications devices suddenly detonated en masse. The group blamed Israel for the assault. Israel has not directly confirmed or denied the blasts.
Hizbollah said it used the ballistic missile against the command centre of the Israeli intelligence agency because it was “responsible for the assassination of leaders and exploding the pagers and walkie-talkies”.
Hizbollah also revealed it had used “Fadi” rockets in its attacks this week for the first time. The rockets — named after a Hizbollah commander killed in 1987 whose brother was also killed by Israel in January this year — have a longer range, at 70km to 100km, than rockets used so far by the group in the fighting since October.
The Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 have an explosive payload of 83kg and 170kg respectively, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. It described them as medium-range “inaccurate ballistic missiles, launched from mobile platforms” that Israel’s Iron Dome is able to intercept. The militant group claimed to have also used the more powerful Fadi-3 rocket for the first time on Tuesday.
Hizbollah has much more substantial missiles in its stockpile that it is yet to use, the INSS said, such as the Zelzal missile, which it said has a range of 200km and carries up to 600kg of explosives.