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IAF hits 5 long-range rocket launchers
Senior air force officer: Every strike on rocket launchers damages Hizbullah's firing ability, as group has limited quantities of weapons; adds: IAF hit senior Hizbullah leaders in Tyre. Released for publication: IDF soldier severely wounded when rocket hits army base
Hanan Greenberg
The Israeli Air Force hit five long-range rocket launchers in Lebanon, a senior Air Force commander revealed Sunday afternoon. “Every strike on rocket launchers damages Hizbullah's firing ability, as the group has limited quantities of the weapon,” he said.
Sunday afternoon it was released for publication that an IDF soldier was severely wounded Sunday morning when a long-range Fajer rocket hit an IDF base near Haifa. The soldier was hospitalized at a Haifa hospital and his family was informed of his condition.
| | IDF strikes in Lebanon (Video: Reuters) |
According to the military chief, Air Force sorties over Lebanonhit 60 buildings in
the Dahiya quarter, Beirut’s Shiite quarter, in which Hizbullah infrastructure is located. During the air strikes, “bunker buster” bombs were fired in attempt to destroy underground targets. The officer said, “In one of the strikes in the Tyre area, a number of senior Hizbullah leaders were hit,” but refused to detail their identities.
The air force chief said that army jets managed to hit a “portable launcher of the type Hizbullah used to fire on Haifa.” At first the air force believed they managed to blow up the actual rocket launcher that fired the lethal barrage on the Haifa train station Sunday
morning, but later concluded that it was a different launcher that was destroyed. According to the officer, in a number of the strikes, rocket crews manning the launchers were also hit.
The IDF assessed that Hizbullah was focusing its attacks during the morning and daytime hours to maximize the likelihood of hitting Israel’s civilian population.
The officer added that the army was operating in two aspects: First, air sorties aimed at hitting terror targets across Lebanon, and second, flyovers aimed at searching Lebanese territory forlong-range rocket launchers.
He explained that hitting the launchers was significant, as Hizbullah was in possession of a limited stockpile of the weapons, and every hit minimized their ability to fire long-range missiles at Israel.
Aviram Zino contributed to the report.
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