TEHRAN - Hezbollah has announced that its air defense unit has shot down an Israeli Hermes 900 drone, which is believed to cost between 10 to 20 million dollars.

The operation on Monday was one of many staged by the resistance movement after Israeli warplanes indiscriminately bombed banks in Lebanon to paralyze the nation’s economy.  

The Israeli occupation regime launched more than a dozen airstrikes across different regions in Lebanon targeting al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial institution that was first set up in 1982 as a charitable foundation.

The bank-like institution has helped many Lebanese overcome financial hardship, as it hands out interest-free loans to all clients across Lebanon.

Israeli airstrikes struck targets it alleged were branches of al-Qard al-Hassan banks mostly in the cities of Nabatieh, Tyre as well as the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut.  

There are more than 30 branches of the bank across Lebanon, including 15 in the densely populated areas of central Beirut and its suburbs.

Despite Israeli claims that the banking institution has been used to boost Hezbollah’s military, the bank itself has only served ordinary Lebanese. 

“They struck empty buildings in residential neighborhoods and destroyed those surrounding neighborhoods. These weren’t military centers or weapons caches,” Ma’an Khalil, the mayor of Ghobeiry municipality in the southern suburbs of Beirut, told the Guardian. 

Following the Israeli war on Lebanon in July 2006, Hezbollah’s martyr Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah issued a directive to remove anything related to Hezbollah’s military from the suburbs of Beirut.

Qualitative rocket barrage
  
Within the framework of Hezbollah’s Khaybar operations and “in response to the targeting of civilians and the massacres committed by the Zionist enemy” the Lebanese resistance said it bombed the Samson base (a command supply center and regional supply unit) west of Lake Tabariyya with a qualitative rocket barrage.

Hezbollah also targeted a gathering of Israeli enemy forces at the Beria air defense missile base with a rocket barrage.

Other operations by the Lebanese resistance on Monday saw a gathering of Israeli soldiers targeted three times with missile barrages on the eastern outskirts of the town of Markaba “inflicting confirmed casualties”.

Hezbollah says Israeli soldiers who tried to evacuate the wounded and dead soldiers near Markaba were also attacked.

The resistance movement targeted the Keila barracks in the occupied Syrian Golan with a rocket barrage and bombed site 2222 in Mount Hermon with a rocket salvo. 

The Maalot-Tarshiha settlement was struck with a barrage of rockets as was Karmiel. 

Furthermore, Hezbollah launched rockets at the 100 Camp north of Ayelet Hashahar and bombed Israeli soldiers in the Rab Thalatheen - Adaisseh - Markab triangle with a large salvo of missiles

A movement of Israeli soldiers at the Kfar Kila crossing were targeted with artillery shells.

Meanwhile, as Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over the Zahrani area in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s “air defense units launched surface-to-air missiles at the enemy aircraft and forced them to leave Lebanese airspace.”

According to Israeli media, at least two dozen soldiers were injured in the past 24 hours, 17 on the border with Lebanon and six soldiers in the Gaza Strip.