Hezbollah said on Sunday it targeted an Israeli military warship off the Lebanese coast and hit it directly, while the Israeli occupation army denied any such strike.
The claim came as fighting between Hezbollah and Israel continued to widen, with the Israeli military announcing strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut and Hezbollah reporting a new wave of attacks on Israeli military sites.
In a statement, Hezbollah confirmed that the strike targeted “at dawn today an Israeli military warship 68 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast,” saying it had been “preparing to carry out attacks on Lebanese territory.”
It said it used a naval cruise missile after tracking the target for hours and that it “confirmed a direct hit,” adding that the operation came “in defense of Lebanon and its people, and in response to the Israeli enemy’s continued shelling of villages and cities, destruction of infrastructure, and displacement of civilians.”
Israeli army radio, citing an unnamed security source, denied that any Israeli warship had been targeted. Israeli army spokesperson Ella Waweya did not mention the incident and said in a post on X that “more than 1,000 Hezbollah operatives” had been killed.
She said the “ground maneuver” in southern Lebanon was continuing, with four divisions taking part in expanding the forward security belt, adding, “We are seeing a clear trend of retreat reflected in a drop in the intensity of fighting from Hezbollah’s side.”
In another post, she said that since the start of the war on Lebanon in March, “the air force has attacked more than 2,000 targets in support of ground forces using fighter jets, combat helicopters, and drones.”
The Israeli occupation army announced that it had launched a military operation on Sunday targeting Hezbollah sites and infrastructure in Beirut, saying it came “in response to rocket barrages fired overnight toward wide areas in northern Israel.”
Lebanon’s independent Central News Agency said Israeli warplanes “dropped thermal balloons over the southern suburbs and struck the Janah area, hitting a three-story building in the Al-Miqdad neighborhood, which was crowded with residents, killing 4 and injuring 39 in a preliminary toll from the Health Ministry’s emergency operations center.”
Hezbollah also said it carried out successive attacks on Israel on Sunday, targeting the Kfar Szold site and infrastructure belonging to the occupation army in the Yesud HaMa’ala settlement in the Galilee, the Avivim and Yir’on settlements in the Galilee, “enemy Israeli infrastructure” in the Ma’alot-Tarshiha settlement, and the Meron base for surveillance and air operations management in northern Israel.
The Lebanese army separately announced on Sunday that one of its soldiers had been killed in an Israeli attack on southern Lebanon.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich previously said that “the Litani River should be the border between us and Lebanon. Just as we control 55% of Gaza, we should do that in Lebanon.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned Israeli attacks targeting civilians and innocents, saying they were a clear violation of international humanitarian law, especially Article 4 of the Geneva Conventions, which stipulates the protection of civilians and civilian institutions and facilities.
Aoun called on what he described as “friendly countries” to intervene “to stop this madness practiced by Israel,” and criticized dragging his country into a war “it has nothing to do with and tying it to the fate of the region.” He asked, “What will Lebanon gain from this war?” and said, “Negotiation is not surrender, and diplomacy is not capitulation.”
Responding to those who reject the principle of negotiation, in an apparent reference to Hezbollah, he said, “When we called for it, we heard some people say: what will we gain from diplomacy? And I ask in return: what will Lebanon gain from the war it was dragged into? The number of martyrs has exceeded 1,400, the number of wounded has reached 4,000, there are thousands of destroyed homes, and more than 1.2 million displaced people are living in difficult conditions.”
He added, “Israel’s goal may be to turn south Lebanon into Gaza, but it was our duty not to allow it to drag us into that.”
