Israel, Hezbollah exchange strikes as U.N. Security Council to discuss crisis

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported Friday that Israeli warplanes struck the towns of Mays al-Jabal, Kfarkela, Adaisseh-Kfarkela, Taybeh and Aitroun. It was not immediately clear whether there were casualties — the area under fire is a closed military zone, meaning access for reporters is limited.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman told The Washington Post on Friday afternoon that more than 140 projectiles were fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Friday. The IDF said in a statement Thursday night that it struck about 100 rocket launchers belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with other infrastructure, including some 1,000 rocket launcher barrels.

The latest violence follows two consecutive days of explosions linked to thousands of Hezbollah communication devices across the country, causing them to detonate in busy streets, supermarkets and at a packed funeral — killing at least 37 people and wounding more than 3,000, in some cases gouging holes in hands and stomachs, and causing blindness in others. The casualties included Hezbollah operatives and noncombatants alike, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, and included medical workers and children.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that Israel was behind the attacks. Two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject said the Israelis did not inform the United States about the specifics before the attack took place but told Washington afterward through intelligence channels. Israeli authorities, who rarely discuss operations in other countries, have declined to comment on whether Israel was responsible.

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate. In a speech Thursday delivered as the rumble of warplanes rolled through Beirut, the movement’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, described the sabotage operation as a declaration of war that would be met with a “severe reckoning.”

Hezbollah, a political party and militant group backed by Iran, began striking Israel in October, after the Israeli military launched its war in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. Since then, the two sides have engaged in near-daily cross-border fire, displacing thousands of civilians on either side, as the death toll in Gaza spirals.

Earlier this week, Israeli officials signaled an increased focus on their country’s border with Lebanon, including updating its official war objectives to include returning thousands of residents along the border to their homes.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operation, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. While the count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, the ministry says the majority are women and children, and experts say the toll is an undercount. Meanwhile, 64 of the 251 Israeli hostages captured by Hamas on Oct. 7 are still believed to be alive, with their exact whereabouts unknown.

Although the United States maintains significant leverage over Israel in the form of ongoing, large-scale weapons transfers, its grip on the crisis appears more tenuous than ever. U.S. officials have touted the absence of a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah as a core achievement of the past 11 months amid failures to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and halt the enormous civilian death toll and restrictions on humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, one of Israel’s leading dailies, the influential columnist Nahum Barnea summed up the logic of the attacks on Hezbollah’s devices with a question: “There is technology. Is there strategy?”

The Israeli government “believes in the soothing effect of pressure: increased military pressure in Gaza will bring about the hostages’ release. Increased military pressure in Lebanon will stop the rocket fire at the communities in northern Israel,” he wrote. “Very logical. But this is not what happens in reality.”

Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.