TEHRAN - Hezbollah highlighted its military prowess and startled Israel into a state of panic by carrying out a surprise drone attack on a military base near the port city of Haifa on Sunday night.

Several Israeli troops were killed and dozens of others injured in the attack that hit the facility and its cafeteria in the Binyamina area. 

Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets toward Nahariya and Acre to engage Israel’s air defense systems during the attack by “squadrons” of drones.

It said the unmanned aerial vehicles were able to “get past Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and hit the target. 

“These drones broke through Israel’s defense radars without detection and reached its target at the training camp of the elite Golani Brigade in Binyamina,” the statement said.

Hezbollah added that the drones “exploded in the rooms where dozens of officers and soldiers of the Israeli enemy were present”. 

The Lebanese resistance movement called the drone attack a retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that claimed the lives of nearly two dozen people. 

Hezbollah drones successfully penetrated Israel's defense radar systems hitting an army base near Haifa. It vowed to intensify retaliatory operations if the regime does not stop aggression against Lebanon. The movement said Sunday’s drone operation caused more than 110 casualties and constituted only a minor attack in the face of Israel’s atrocities against Lebanese people. 
Hezbollah said the troops that were targeted in the Binyamina area were preparing for aggression against the Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah continued missile strikes against Israeli positions on Monday inflicting more losses on the regime.  
Aircraft sirens were heard in central Israel following the attack.  
Hezbollah also hit the Israeli naval base in Haifa. Israeli sites in the occupied Shebaa Farms were also targeted.
  
Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire a day after the regime launched war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.  Hezbollah has hit Israeli military positions in solidarity with Palestinians in the enclave. 
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in northern Israel and southern Lebanon amid the exchanges of fire between the two sides over the course of the Gaza war which has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians. 

CNN: There were no reports of alerts in the Binyamina area at the time of Hezbollah’s drone attack on Sunday. Israel launched a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23.  The regime also assassinated Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a massive airstrike on a neighborhood in southern Beirut on September 27. On October 1, Israel launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon.  

Israel, which has killed more than 2,200 people in Lebanon since October last year, has said the ground offensive is aimed at removing Hezbollah from the border area and allowing evacuated Israelis to return to northern Israel. 

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem rejected the Israeli dreams in a speech last week. He stressed that the Lebanese resistance group will continue striking Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Israel’s vulnerability 

Israel claims that it has one of the most sophisticated defense systems in the world, known as the Iron Dome, which is primarily designed to counter short-range rockets and artillery. But the Hezbollah drone attack once again turned the spotlight on the movement’s military strength and revealed the regime’s vulnerability. 

According to CNN, there were no reports of alerts in the Binyamina area at the time of the attack, raising questions of how the drone was able to penetrate so deep into Israel without being spotted.

The American news channel described the Hezbollah drone attack as one of the bloodiest on Israel since the beginning of the Gaza war. 

Israel caught off guard 

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari pledged to conduct an investigation to determine how the drone was able to penetrate the base without triggering any alarms. 

“We will learn from and investigate the incident. The threat of UAVs is a threat we are dealing with since the beginning of the war. We need an improvement to our defense,” he added.  

Israeli military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi also described the Hezbollah drone attack “difficult and painful”.

“We are at war and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful,” he said. 

Citing a paramedic, the Israeli emergency service acknowledged the severity of the Hezbollah drone attack.  

“We declared it a mass casualty event and treated patients suffering from blast injuries and shrapnel. The injuries were severe, and we evacuated the injured to hospitals as quickly as possible for further medical treatment.”

Israel’s illusions 

Israel has maintained the misconception that the assassination of Nasrallah and senior Hezbollah commanders has diminished the strength of the resistance group. 

Israel's army chief described Hezbollah drone strike on the military training base near Haifa as "difficult and painful".Under such erroneous beliefs, Israel assassinated Nasrallah’s predecessor Sayyed Abbas Al-Mousawi in 1992.

But Nasrallah turned the movement into a more powerful political and military force. 

Hezbollah currently has 100,000 fighters. It has also increased its stockpile of missiles from 14,000 in 2006 to about 150,000 and has developed precision-guided missiles and its drone programs. 

Israel waged war on Lebanon in 2006 but Hezbollah forced the regime’s army to retreat after 34 days. 

Israel has also assassinated other regional resistance leaders and commanders in an attempt to cripple their movements. Nonetheless, this policy has fallen flat.  

For now, the Hezbollah drone attack on Israel’s elite military unit in Binyamina has demonstrated that its military capabilities are intact and assassinations of its leaders remain counterproductive.