On April 12 the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah fired several dozen rocket artillery rounds on targets in northern Israel, with the attack supplemented by strikes from single use ‘kamikaze’ drones. Approximately 40 rockets were fired, with Hezbollah stating that these were launched in response to Israeli air strikes on the villages of Aita Al Shaab and Al Taybeh earlier in the evening. The represents the latest in a series of hostilities between the two parties, with Hezbollah on April 6 having shot down two Israeli surveillance drones over Lebanon, the Hermes 900 and Hermes 450, in one of the most significant demonstrations of its air defence capabilities in its history. Protracted skirmishes between the two parties since October 2023 have seen Hezbollah demonstrate increasingly advanced military capabilities, including use of drones and artillery to suppress Israeli Iron Dome air defence batteries on multiple occasions, and the use of precision guided rocket artillery to disable a key airbase in early January. Hezbollah on January 25 for the first time also demonstrated the use of sophisticated ‘fire and forget’ anti tank weapons to strike Israeli armour.
Hezbollah’s latest strike comes as U.S. and Israeli sources have warned of an imminent Iranian attack on Israel, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on an Iranian diplomatic building in neighbouring Syria on April 1. The attack killed a brigadier general in the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who had played a key role in overseeing and supporting paramilitary operations in support of the Syrian state and worked closely with Hezbollah. The militia has been credited with having dealt Israel the only defeat in its history during a 34 day war from July-August 2006, and subsequently from 2013 played a central role supporting Syrian government counterinsurgency efforts against militants supported by Israel and many of its allies within NATO including Turkey, France and the United States. Although Hezbollah’s forces are strongly influenced by North Korean military thought, and make extensive use of Korean weaponry, they have consistently coordinated closely with and are heavily funded by Iran.