After 48-hour lull, Hezbollah rockets rain down on Israel

(JNS) — The Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon resumed its attacks on northern Israel late Thursday night, firing a large volley of rockets at civilian communities in the Jewish state’s Western Galilee.

The rocket assault ended a 48-hour lull that followed Tuesday’s Israeli airstrike in Beirut in which Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s No. 2, was killed.

Air-raid sirens were activated in Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra, Hanita, Shlomi, Matzuva, Liman, Betzet, Shlomi, Snir and the Achziv Miluot industrial zone, according to the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command.

Local media reported that the barrage towards the north comprised 60 rockets, some 15 of which were said to have been intercepted by air defenses. No casualties were reported in the rocket attacks.

No projectiles had been fired from Lebanon since the evening of July 30 when the Israeli Air Force killed Shukr, who was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 children in Majhal Shams, a Druze village in the Golan Heights, as well as the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 U.S. and French troops in Beirut.

Earlier on Thursday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that the attacks on northern Israel would “continue from tomorrow, and this has nothing to do with responding to the assassinations, but rather a continuation of the battle since Oct. 8,” vowing to continue cross-border fire until a ceasefire is reached with Hamas in Gaza.

Hezbollah has attacked northern Israel nearly every day since joining the war in support of Gaza-based Hamas on Oct. 8, killing more than 20 people and causing widespread damage. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians remain internally displaced due to the ongoing violence.