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.
Israel’s military early Saturday reported a drone from Lebanon had “hit a structure” in Caesarea. The military statement, however, did not specify if the hit structure was the prime minister’s home.
While fighting a two-front war, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel has also vowed to respond to Iran’s 1 October 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 7 October 2023 attack.
