Heavy fighting continued on Oct. 9 both in Gaza and on the Lebanese border.
In Gaza, fighting was concentrated on Jabaliya in northern Gaza, where Israel has been conducting a large operation.
Airstrikes there killed 18 people. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered three hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate.
A Hezbollah missile attack killed two people in Kiryat Shmona, Israel’s northernmost city, and wounded three.
They were the first Israeli civilians killed by rockets since fighting intensified there last month. They were identified as a couple in their 40s walking their dog, who hadn’t been able to reach shelter in time.
Another five were wounded in a large rocket barrage on Haifa, Israel.
At least 40 rockets were fired at Haifa from Lebanon and 20 at Kiryat Shmona, according to the IDF.
Israeli television showed buildings burning in the city and a woman tending to a motorist next to a badly damaged car on an overpass.
The IDF stated that it used air strikes to hit a Hezbollah weapons production facility and an intelligence headquarters in Dahieh, a Beirut suburb.
The designated terrorist group responded with strikes against northern Israel, sirens sounding throughout the region.
Hezbollah has fired more than 3,000 rockets at northern Israel, and sometimes beyond, since the IDF began its “Operation Northern Arrows” offensive on Sept. 23, designed to remove the terrorist group from southern Lebanon.
The IDF stated that it wants to make northern Israel safe again so that 60,000 to 80,000 people who had to evacuate can return home.
Hezbollah began rocketing the area on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel and the massacre of 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023.
Fires burn as a result of rockets launched from Lebanon into northern Israel, next to the city of Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanon border, on Oct. 5, 2024. (Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images)
The IDF stated that Hezbollah had “cynically exploited” the Green Without Borders (GWB) environmental nongovernmental organization, using its nature reserves as a front in southern Lebanon.
Troops of the IDF’s 36th Division found and destroyed tunnels, stored weapons, and military observation posts inside GWB facilities near the border and Israeli communities.
Hezbollah stated that it had targeted Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese border village of Labbouneh with artillery shells and rockets on Oct. 9 and claimed to have pushed the troops back.
The IDF stated that three soldiers were severely injured in fighting in southern Lebanon on Oct. 9.
Israeli troops razed the so-called Garden of Iran near the southern Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ras and raised an Israeli flag over it.
The park, less than a kilometer from the Israeli border, used to feature a statue of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ assassinated Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani pointing at Israel and a replica of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock.
Violence spread to the West Bank, where Israeli forces killed five armed Palestinian fighters, opening fire on their car near the city of Nablus.
The Israeli military on Oct. 8 struck a building in the Syrian capital of Damascus, targeting a Hezbollah official involved with smuggling weapons into Lebanon.
The attack, by three missiles coming from Israel’s Golan Heights, according to Syrian state media, hit a residential building in the Mezzah neighborhood near the Iranian embassy.
Seven citizens, including women and children, were reported killed.
A view of a residential building hit by a reported Israeli air strike, in the Mazzeh suburb on the western outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on Oct. 8, 2024. (Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)
The target was said to be Haj Samir, a senior member of Hezbollah’s Unit 4400, responsible for arms transfers from Iran to Lebanon, according to the Alma Institute, an Israeli strategic think tank focusing on the northern frontier.
The target building is 600 yards from the Iranian embassy, according to the institute.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
