Two 'quiet' days in northern Israel: IDF colonel says Hezbollah still shocked, assessing damage

IDF soldier lightly wounded by drone, Israel allegedly strikes deep within Lebanon

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Following the pre-emptive strikes on some 270 Hezbollah targets carried out by Israel Defense Forces on Sunday, the terror group is still assessing the damage, IDF Colonel Anan Abbas told the Maariv newspaper on Tuesday.

While the terror group resumed its daily attacks on Israel late on Monday, since then, the number of attacks has been significantly lower than in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s escalation.

On Tuesday, Abbas, the Head of Control at the IDF's Northern Command central operations room, stated: “They're trying to comprehend the extent of the damage inflicted on them, and they’ll fully understand it in the coming days. Right now, they’re just beginning to grasp what happened and how it unfolded.”

"Their shock comes from the sheer number of planes we deployed simultaneously, striking an overwhelming number of targets in a very short time. They're also astonished by the precision of our strikes – how we managed to accurately hit so many targets, neutralize their assets, and do so without harming civilians or causing collateral damage," Abbas added.

On Monday, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for one attack against Israel, followed by three more attacks on Tuesday, including the launch of several drones, one of which exploded near Beit Hillel.

The IDF reported one soldier lightly wounded in the incident. Most other drones were intercepted and didn’t cause additional casualties or significant damage.

In response, Israel carried out two targeted strikes on vehicles far from its borders, Arabic-language media reported.

The first strike targeted one, or possibly two, trucks loaded with Hezbollah missiles in the area of Baalbek, in the Bekaa Valley. “One of the vehicles was hit and a series of explosions were heard in the area,” a Lebanese security source told AFP.

Another source told Reuters that Hezbollah military equipment was hit in the strike, adding that it was “likely” the truck transported a damaged rocket launcher.

One unconfirmed report suggested that an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle traveling on the highway between Beirut and Damascus, near the Lebanon-Syria border on the Syrian side.

While the highway is known to be a major conduit for weapon smuggling operations for Hezbollah, the exact target of the strike was not confirmed.

Security sources later told Reuters that three terrorists belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group and one Hezbollah terrorist were killed in the strike.

At the time of publication, Israel had not officially commented on the two strikes.

On Wednesday, the IDF struck a terror squad in a building in the town of al-Adaisa, in addition to shelling Hezbollah targets in Sheba and Yarine with artillery.

“Since the beginning of the war, we have carried out over 7,000 attacks in Lebanon and eliminated over 550 Hezbollah terrorists, including their senior commanders,” Abbas explained.

“Our mission is to return the residents of the north safely to their homes.”