Prime Minister Netanyahu said Friday evening that he ordered the IDF to strike 150 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon with great force and that dozens of operatives were killed in the strikes. The statement follows the killing of four IDF soldiers in a Hezbollah anti-tank ambush earlier Friday, which Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz defined as a ceasefire violation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday evening that he ordered the IDF to strike 150 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon with great force and that dozens of operatives were killed. The statement, which the prime minister issued at 16:38 Jerusalem, formalizes what was already reported as a massive wave of Israeli airstrikes—officially the fourth bulletin on this escalation Friday alone. By that time the military had already announced hitting over 150 targets since midnight, including command centers in Nabatieh and the Beqaa Valley, in response to a Hezbollah anti-tank and drone ambush on the 52nd Battalion tank crew earlier Friday that killed four soldiers, among them the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon. Defense Minister Israel Katz earlier in the day defined any Hezbollah attack on IDF troops in Lebanon as a ceasefire violation, as The Zioneer reported at 14:42 Jerusalem.
At 14:42 Jerusalem, Netanyahu and Katz ordered the military to strike Hezbollah forcefully after the ambush, and within hours the IDF reported over 80 targets hit, then over 100, and by 16:38 the figure reached 150. The source of the strike count shifted over the thread: initial IDF statements cited military assessments; later, Netanyahu attributed the strikes directly to his command, framing the 150-target wave as a deliberate policy response. The Zioneer had reported earlier Friday that the IDF struck over 150 Hezbollah sites since midnight; the prime minister's confirmation added the phrase 'dozens of operatives killed' to the same toll.
As The Zioneer reported on Sun Jun 14, over 70 Hezbollah sites had been struck in a prior 24-hour period, and over 10 field commanders killed since the ceasefire. On Sat Jun 6, the IDF struck approximately 150 Hezbollah infrastructure sites over a weekend that also saw close-quarters encounters leaving Israeli officers wounded. Hezbollah claimed 25 military operations against IDF troops on Sun Jun 7, though those claims lacked independent confirmation.
The casualty figure among Hezbollah operatives—dozens—remains a single-source Israeli claim, unaccompanied by names, locations, or damage assessments from the targeted sites. No independent confirmation of the number has been provided.
4 developments
- StrongNetanyahu, Katz define Hezbollah attacks on IDF troops in southern Lebanon as ceasefire violations, ordering massive strikes
- StrongNetanyahu: Hezbollah will pay 'heavy price,' IDF instructed to strike with 'immense force'
- StrongNetanyahu confirms IDF strike on Hezbollah targets in Beirut's Dahiyeh
- DevelopingIDF says it struck 70+ Hezbollah sites, eliminated seven operatives from underground route
Source and signal
- Internal intake