Syrian media on Friday morning reported one dead and one wounded in an Israeli attack on a vehicle on the road leading to Damascus airport. According to the Saudi news channel Al-Hadith, the deceased is a member of the Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hezbollah (battalions of God’s party).
The attack, which is attributed to Israel and was first reported by the pro-Iranian news agency Saberin earlier, has not been reported by any official Syrian media so far.
According to Saberin, Friday’s attack in Damascus targeted the commander of Kata’ib Hezbollah, killing one person and moderately wounding another.
A Syrian security source also stated that the attack was carried out by a UAV, which launched two missiles at the terrorist group’s headquarters located in a residential area of Damascus. According to the source, the assassinated official is Abu Haider al-Khafaji, an Iraqi national.
Israel initiated a series of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Thursday, just moments before Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared from his bunker that the two days of intense assaults on the beepers and walkie-talkies of his members constituted a declaration of war.
Thursday’s airstrikes were the most extensive since October 9, when skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah had begun. In his speech, Nasrallah discussed the explosive incidents that had left his followers astonished by the magnitude of the attacks. It also blinded more than 500 of them and wounded hundreds more in delicate parts of their anatomy, guaranteeing they would not produce new little Hezbollah terrorists.
Israeli aircraft flew over Beirut, producing sonic booms, a tactic they have employed repeatedly in recent months to instill fear in the group and panic in the residents of the Lebanese capital. Nasrallah called the attack on his members’ means of receiving orders to murder Israeli civilians “a significant terrorist operation,” and a declaration of war.
Hezbollah now confronts a daunting challenge in reconstructing its leadership structure following the severe disruption of its fundamental communication networks and the directed assassinations of its top commanders. These assassinations stopped just shy of taking down Nasrallah himself. The terrorist group must now simultaneously rebuild confidence among its ranks while identifying and addressing the vulnerabilities or infiltrators that enabled the security breach.
Israeli officials this week indicated a shift in their focus from the conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip to the confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The IDF has progressively allocated more resources and personnel to this engagement, primarily along its northern border.
