Hezbollah will begin firing at Israeli drones that enter Lebanese airspace, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday evening, adding that the terrorist organization had “no more red lines.”
Nasrallah’s remarks came during a televised address in the aftermath of Hezbollah’s recent missile attack against an Israeli military vehicle in northern Israel, which was followed by retaliatory Israeli strikes on multiple Hezbollah targets.
“Enough,” said Nasrallah, “The Lebanese have the right to defend themselves. There is now a new operational space, and it is Lebanon’s skies. When it comes to dealing with the [Israeli] UAVs, it will happen. I won’t specify when and how, but it will come.”
The Hezbollah leader went on to say that “[Israel in the past] would not tolerate anyone putting a hand on the [border] fence, sending something like a drone back and forth quickly, shooting in the air or throwing a bomb into an open area. It would respond harshly because for it that was a red line. What happened yesterday is that the resistance broke what has for the past dozens of years been the biggest Israeli red line.
“It is no longer a red line,” he said. “That has ended. There are no more red lines.”
On Sunday, Hezbollah launched two guided anti-tank missiles at an armored Israel Defense Forces vehicle traveling along a road near the Israel-Lebanon border. The terrorist organization initially claimed the vehicle had been destroyed and the soldiers inside it killed or wounded, but the IDF denied both that there had been any casualties and that the vehicle was destroyed. According to the IDF the vehicle’s tires were punctured by shrapnel.
Hezbollah released a video of the attack which was widely circulated in Arab media, showing Hezbollah operatives firing 9M133 Kornet guided anti-tank rockets at the vehicle. While the clouds of smoke from the explosions obscure the vehicle, it was not clear from the video whether the missiles scored a direct hit.
Security camera footage from the entrance to Kibbutz Yaron later released appears to show the IDF vehicle emerging unscathed from the clouds of smoke on the border road.
Immediately after the attack, video footage emerged of Israeli troops evacuating what appeared to be wounded soldiers via helicopter, but the IDF later said the “wounded soldiers” were dummies and the evacuation faked, as a ploy to trick Hezbollah into thinking it had achieved a direct hit.
During his speech on Monday, Nasrallah said “there will be no such thing as international borders” if Israel carries out additional attacks in Lebanon, adding that not just the border communities, but sites “deep inside” Israel would become targets.
He boasted that Israel had “emptied entire bases” in response to the Hezbollah attack, referring to a report by RT Arabic on Monday which showed a reporter walking through a completely empty military post near the border.
The report prompted the IDF to lock the base and release a statement confirming the post was evacuated days prior to the attack, the Times of Israel reported.
“This was a post on the border line that was classified last week as a threatened position,” the IDF spokesperson’s unit said, according to the report. “It was therefore evacuated during the week, and the forces defended the area from the rear line. The contents of the post were removed and there is no concern of information leakage” from the reporter’s visit.
(JNS)
{Matzav.com}
