Hezbollah announced on Saturday that it had fired 62 missiles at an Israeli air surveillance base near the Lebanese border. The barrage was an “initial response” to the assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut earlier this week, the Lebanese militants declared.
Incoming rocket alerts sounded across northern Israel on Saturday as dozens of missiles struck the base atop Mount Meron, the highest summit in Israeli territory outside the Golan Heights. The base is home to a radar station and surveillance apparatus used to direct Israeli warplanes over Lebanon and parts of Syria, and to intercept communications from both countries.
“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri…the Islamic resistance targeted the Meron air control base with 62 missiles of various types,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
The Lebanese paramilitary group described the Meron base as “the sole center for administration, monitoring, and air control in the north of the usurping entity [Israel],” without which Israel has “no viable alternative.”
