Lebanon: Hezbollah claims attempted ballistic missile attack on Mossad HQ
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has said its fighters fired a ballistic missile targeting the Mossad intelligence agency headquarters near Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
Israel's military said its air defence systems had intercepted the rocket as it was detected crossing from Lebanon, triggering warning sirens in Tel Aviv and other areas of central Israel.
Hezbollah said the intended target was the intelligence agency’s headquarters, which it said was responsible for last week's pager and radio device attacks and the assassinations of senior Hezbollah leaders.
“The Islamic Resistance launched a ‘Qader 1’ ballistic missile at 6:30am (03:30 GMT) on Wednesday, 25-9-2024, targeting the Mossad headquarters in the outskirts of Tel Aviv,” the statement read.
“The headquarters are responsible for the assassination of leaders and the explosion of pagers and wireless devices.”
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An Israeli military spokesperson said the missile was bound for “civilian areas” in Tel Aviv. “The Mossad headquarters is not in that area,” said spokesperson Nadav Shoshani.
He added that there were no casualties as a result of the attack.
A number of important Israeli military sites are embedded in civilian areas, such as Israel's defence ministry, which has its headquarters in central Tel Aviv.
According to the Israeli military, the attempted missile strike on Wednesday was the first time a missile launched from Lebanon had reached central Israel.
It also reported that Hezbollah had fired rockets targeting the occupied Golan Heights and near Mount Carmel in northern Israel, adding that all of them were intercepted.
The launch comes amid Israel’s wide-scale bombing of southern and eastern Lebanon which began on Monday and has so far killed at least 558 people and forced tens of thousands to flee.
On Monday, Israel launched roughly 1,600 strikes across Lebanon, in what was the deadliest day of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since the 2006 Lebanon war.
On Friday, Israel said it killed the head of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force and his deputies.
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