Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist illegally occupying southern Lebanon, fired hundreds of rockets at Israel overnight into Wednesday morning after an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike on a senior Hezbollah commander.
IAF aircraft eliminated Sami Taleb Abdullah, the commander of the Nasr Unit in the Hezbollah terrorist organization, last night. This was part of a strike on a Hezbollah command and control center in the area of Jouaiyya in southern Lebanon, which was used to direct terrorist… pic.twitter.com/DE4qKnC7Mk
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 12, 2024
The attacks coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot (Pentecost), which celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments and the Torah on Mount Sinai. Many Israelis in northern Israel were forced to take shelter. In one video, families are seen scattering to bomb shelters from a picnic as a father, who is filming, calms his children.
These are not fireworks to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. These are our aerial defense systems defending our civilians against a barrage of Hezbollah rockets in northern Israel. pic.twitter.com/Z6hoGDvpT8
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) June 11, 2024
The IDF said in a statement:
Last night (Tuesday), a Hezbollah command and control center in the area of Jouaiyya in southern Lebanon, which was used to direct terror attacks against Israeli territory from southeastern Lebanon in recent months, was struck by the IAF. As part of the strike, Sami Taleb Abdullah, the commander of the Nasr Unit in the Hezbollah terrorist organization, was eliminated. Sami Taleb Abdullah was one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders in southern Lebanon.
For many years, the terrorist planned, advanced, and carried out a large number of terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Three additional Hezbollah terrorist operatives were also eliminated in the strike.
Hezbollah fired over 200 rockets at northern Israel, including near the holy city of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, according to the Times of Israel. There were no casualties, but several brush fires, which firefighters extinguished.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking from Doha, Qatar, said that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza would help calm tensions between Israel and Hezbollah because it would remove Hezbollah’s reasons for war.
Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel and moved years ago into the border region of southern Lebanon in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1707 (2006) to advance its goal, regardless of the Gaza war.
It began firing sporadically on Israel after the Hamas terror attack of October 7. It paused during a truce in November when Hamas released Israeli hostages and Israel released Palestinian terrorists, but has accelerated its attacks since.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.