Deadly Hezbollah drone attack exposes Israel’s vulnerabilities

(CNN)- Hezbollah’s deadly attack on a military base inside Israeli territory represents a major headache for Israel, which has sought to reduce the threat from the Iranian-backed terrorist group, despite launching a massive bombing campaign and a ground campaign against it. Continues to struggle.

A drone launched from southern Lebanon managed to bypass Israeli air defenses without detection and reach the Golani Brigade base, about 65 kilometers from the Israeli border. The attack occurred shortly after 7:00 pm (dinner time) on Sunday and although the forces have not released any details about the impact site, it is clear from photographs of the scene that the drone hit the base dining room. Attacked.

Both the timing and location of the attack suggest that Hezbollah has gathered sufficient information and has the ability to maximize casualties. The Golani Brigade is considered an elite Israeli infantry unit and is deployed to southern Lebanon as part of Israel’s ground operations in that region.

Four soldiers were killed and more than 60 were wounded, eight of them seriously, bringing the total number of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers killed since the ground operation began two weeks earlier to at least 18. It’s done. Thousands of people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon since late September, according to that country’s health ministry.

Sunday’s attack is the bloodiest against IDF members inside Israel since the war against Hamas began last October.

Daniel Sobelman, an international security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said this shows that Hezbollah is still capable of attacking.

“This is a clear sign that Hezbollah is regaining its strategic balance after the recent devastating attacks on its leadership and command and control mechanisms,” he told CNN, referring to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior officials. ”

Israel’s air defense systems are impressive, intercepting and destroying most projectiles fired at the country. But these have been primarily designed and developed to counter non-drone rockets and missiles, which can be launched from anywhere, fly low and slow and change direction rapidly .

And although the IDF has not said what type of aircraft was used in Sunday’s attack, experts told CNN it was likely a Mirsad drone, a type known in Iran as an Ababil drone.

Orna Mizrahi, a senior researcher at the Israel Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, told CNN that such unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are hard to detect because “they are small, very light and have radar signatures Are.” Very little.”

Iran and its allies are trying to overwhelm Israel’s defense systems, Mizrahi said, adding drones to the equation after identifying them as “a weakness” for Israel.

“Every time we find a solution to something, they find another way to attack,” he said.

Israel’s residents are well trained when it comes to surviving threats from above. Most people run to shelters or hide in ditches, ubiquitous in most parts of the country, as soon as they hear sirens signaling imminent aerial danger.

But a drone sent by Hezbollah over the weekend managed to penetrate without activating Israeli warning systems. The soldiers present in the dining room were attacked without any warning.

And this is not the first time this has happened.

In June, Hezbollah released a nine-minute drone video that showed civilian and military locations in and around Haifa, one of Israel’s largest cities. It appears that the UAV did not even go unnoticed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

In response to the video, IDF Chief of Staff Harzi Halevi said at the time that the Israeli military was “preparing and looking for solutions to deal with these and other capabilities.”

Then in July, a drone launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen killed one person and injured at least 10 others in Tel Aviv. No sirens were activated during that attack. The IDF said two drones were fired and one was intercepted, while the other was not intercepted due to what they said was human error.

The strategy of sending two drones also appears to have been repeated by Hezbollah last week.

The IDF said two drones were launched from Lebanon on Friday, adding that it had intercepted one of them, but did not say what happened to the other. The attack damaged a nursing home in the central Israeli coastal city of Herzliya, but no injuries were reported.

It is quite possible that the same strategy may have been implemented on Sunday also. Shortly before the first reports of the attack on the Golani Brigade base, the IDF said it had intercepted a UAV launched from Lebanon in Israel’s northern naval area. This suggests that the drone that attacked the base was a second aircraft that was fired simultaneously with or immediately before or after it. The IDF did not comment on the number of drones launched on Sunday.

Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets toward the northern Israeli cities of Nahariya and Acre, as well as launching drones, to attack Israel’s air defense systems.

Hezbollah has been able to fire on Israel, even as the IDF has launched intense aerial bombardments inside Lebanon, as well as a limited ground campaign targeting the group.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 16, when Israel stepped up its campaign against Hezbollah, according to a CNN tally based on statements from Lebanon’s health ministry.

When the IDF began its ground campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it stressed that any cross-border operations would be “limited” in both geographical scope and duration and would aim to eliminate Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in border areas. will be.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel since Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel on October 8 last year in support of Hamas in Gaza, which had launched deadly attacks on Israel a day earlier.

But the ground reality shows that Israel is preparing for the possibility of a much bigger war. It has deployed units from four divisions in southern Lebanon and ordered the evacuation of residents from a quarter of Lebanese territory. According to the United Nations, more than 1.2 million people are currently displaced.

The Israel Defense Forces does not disclose its troop numbers, but each division is believed to have about 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers.

Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said the last time Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, it sent about 30,000 military personnel across the border.

That war ended in a stalemate after 34 days when about 1,100 Lebanese and about 170 Israelis, including 120 soldiers, were killed.

CSIS said a new operation on the ground might require an even larger force than the one Israel deployed against Hezbollah in 2006. However, even this may not be enough.

“Hezbollah’s ability to disrupt life in much of northern Israel and impose painful costs on Israel shows that it is regaining its operational sustainability,” Sobelman, an international security expert, told CNN.

He said what often matters most in guerrilla wars is the weaker actor’s ability to pressure the other side, fight back, and inflict damage.

As the IDF’s death toll rises in the war against Hezbollah, it is clear that the militant group is determined to press forward despite serious setbacks.

CNN’s Nadine Ibrahim and Zeena Saifi contributed to this report.