Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused Iran-backed Hezbollah of trying to assassinate him, with the Middle East already on edge after Israel had vowed retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage.
Netanyahu’s office said a drone was launched toward his residence in the central town of Caesarea on Saturday but he and his wife were not home at the time and there were no injuries.
“The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” he said in comments to Tehran and “its proxies”, which include Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a group Israel has been at war with since late September.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said a drone “hit a building in Caesarea, while trying to hit the prime minister”.
While fighting a two-front war, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel has also vowed to respond to Iran’s October 1 missile barrage with a “deadly, precise and surprising,” attack, according to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Iran said it fired 200 missiles at its arch-foe in response to the killing of an Iranian general and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that a sweeping Israeli military operation has killed more than 400 people in two weeks in the territory’s north, where Israel kept hammering militant targets while fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hamas ally Hezbollah has vowed to intensify attacks on Israel and on Saturday launched rocket barrages at Israel’s north, where rescuers said one man was killed by shrapnel.
Hamas, Hezbollah and allied Iran-backed groups in the region have vowed to keep fighting after Israeli troops killed the Palestinian movement’s leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, more than a year into the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
Analysts said Sinwar, accused of masterminding that attack on Israel, was pivotal to ending the Gaza war and securing the release of Israeli hostages.
Israel, vowing to stop Hamas militants from regrouping in northern Gaza, launched a major air and ground assault on October 6, tightening its siege on the war-battered area and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said “we have recovered more than 400 martyrs from the various targeted areas in the northern Gaza Strip”, including Jabalia and its refugee camp, since the Israeli operation began.
The actual death toll may be higher, Bassal told AFP, as “there are dozens of bodies scattered in the streets of Jabalia”.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the civil defence agency’s reports out of Gaza, including that an overnight air raid on Jabalia killed 33 people.
“More than a year has passed, and every day our blood is shed,” displaced Gazan Nasser Shaqura said outside a hospital in Deir el-Balah, where victims of an Israeli air strike were taken.
“Every day, every hour, there is a massacre,” he said. “This is what our lives have become”.
