Israel Says It Shot Down Missile Over Tel Aviv

Israel Says It Shot Down Missile Over Tel Aviv

The missile fired from Lebanon was the first time Hezbollah had launched an attack aimed at Tel Aviv, the military said.

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By Victoria KimGabby Sobelman and Aaron Boxerman

The Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile that Hezbollah fired at Tel Aviv from Lebanon on Wednesday, in one of the militant group’s most far-reaching attacks into Israeli territory in decades of conflict.

The surface-to-surface missile, which set off alerts in Tel Aviv and the coastal resort of Netanya, was shot down by Israel’s air defense, the military said. Air-raid sirens sent residents fleeing into shelters in the early morning hours. Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said it had not received reports of injuries.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, said in a statement that it had launched a ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. The group said the attack was in retaliation for the assassination of its leaders and the explosion of pagers and radios that incapacitated many of its members.

A spokesman for the Israeli military, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said the attack marked the first time the group had taken aim at Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic center. The missile had been headed toward civilian areas, rather than the Mossad headquarters, before it was intercepted, he told reporters in a news briefing.

“They’re trying to shoot more and farther in,” he said. “This morning, they were able to shoot farther in, the first time in history to Tel Aviv.”

Those attacks last week targeting Hezbollah leaders were followed by a barrage of Israeli airstrikes against the group in Lebanon since Monday that has killed more than 500 people, according to Lebanese authorities. The attacks have brought the two sides closer to all-out war than at any time since the start of the war in Gaza last October.

The Israeli military said its air force had struck the launcher from which the missile was fired, in the town of Nafakhiyeh in southern Lebanon.

After the Hamas-led attacks last October sparked the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian ally. In the year since, Israel and Hezbollah have been trading attacks, driving over 160,000 people from their homes near the border in both countries.

But Tel Aviv in central Israel has been largely sheltered from the conflict. As recently as Saturday, families were flocking to beaches and businesses were bustling in the city, 70 miles from the border with Lebanon.

Since Sunday, Hezbollah has launched more than 500 missiles, rockets and drones into Israel, most of which were intercepted. The group has appeared undeterred by the string of attacks by Israel last week.

Hezbollah, which many analysts consider the most powerful of the Iranian proxy groups and the biggest military threat to Israel, has spent years building military capacity since its war with Israel in 2006. The group was estimated to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles before Israel’s strikes this week.

Our Coverage of the Middle East Crisis

• Israel Invades Lebanon: The Israeli military began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, targeting what it said was Hezbollah military infrastructure in villages close to the Israel-Lebanon border.
• Striking on Multiple Fronts: The escalation of violence between Israel and Iran-backed proxies across the Middle East threatened to bring the combatants closer to an all-out regional war.
• Iran Projects Caution: Leaders in Tehran suggested it would be the Lebanese militia that would strike back at Israel after the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, and bombings in Beirut.
• Biden-Netanyahu Disconnect: Israeli officials gave their American counterparts no advance warning of the strike that killed Nasrallah. But President Biden said the killing was “a measure of justice” for victims of Hezbollah terrorism.
• A Strike Years in the Making: After the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israel invested heavily to intercept the group’s communications and track its commanders in a shadowy war that ultimately led to the killing of Nasrallah.