Hezbollah claimed to hit Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv, Israel said its strikes had been pre-emptive to avert larger attack.
Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire early on Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely feared all-out war, as both sides signalled their most intense exchange of fire in months was over.
The cross-border attack came as high-level talks resumed in Egypt aimed at a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the war in Gaza that also would ease regional tensions.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said his group hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv in a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones, and Israel claimed its strikes had been pre-emptive to avert a larger attack. Neither offered evidence.
Nasrallah said the attack, a response to Israel’s killing of a top militant commander in Beirut last month, had been delayed to give the Gaza ceasefire talks a chance, and so fellow Iran-backed groups could discuss with Iran whether to attack Israel all at once. Israeli and US military deployment also played a role.
The “main target for the operation” inside Israel was “the Glilot base – the main Israeli military intelligence base”, around 100km (60 miles) from the Israel-Lebanon border, Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
“We will now reserve the right to respond at a later time” if the results of Sunday’s attack are not sufficient, Nasrallah said, adding that allied Houthi rebels in Yemen – and Iran itself – had yet to respond. But he told the Lebanese people: “At this current stage, the country can take a breath and relax.”
The Israeli army said Hezbollah failed to strike the installation.
“I can confirm that there were no hits at the Glilot base,” a spokesman for the Israeli military said.
According to Israeli media reports, the base hosts headquarters of the Mossad spy agency, which has never revealed its address.
Israel and Hezbollah said they aimed only at military targets. Israel’s military said one soldier with the navy was killed and two others were wounded either by an interceptor for incoming fire, or by shrapnel from one.
