Israel Destroyed 100 Missiles Heading for Hezbollah, IDF Officer Says

April 27, 2017

by: Ilse Posselt

Thursday, 27 April 2017 | According to a senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officer, the Jewish state managed to destroy a shipment of some 100 state-of-the-art missiles earmarked for Hezbollah in an airstrike late last month.

Addressing reporters during a press briefing on the Jewish state’s security challenges on Tuesday, the officer confirmed that the entire cache of weapons heading to Lebanon was destroyed. He did not, however, elaborate as to the type of missiles the shipment contained.

The airstrike in question occurred roughly six weeks ago and was widely covered by Israeli and international media alike. On 17 March, IDF jets struck a target near Palmyra in Syria. While returning to base, Syrian forces fired anti-aircraft missiles at the planes, which Israel’s Arrow-3 intercepted. This marked the first time the long-range anti-missile system proved its mettle operationally.

At the time, Arab media reported that the target of the Israeli strike was a convoy carrying advanced weapons from war-torn Syria to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror organization perched on Israel’s northern border. Now these reports have been corroborated.

In a rare and unprecedented confirmation of operations conducted in foreign airspace, the IDF officer explained that this was not the first time Israel has acted to prevent the smuggling of weapons to the Iran terror proxy amidst the chaos of civil war.

Discussing the 17 March events, the officer said that the forces of Bashar al-Assad were well aware that their outdated missiles were unable to hit the Israeli planes. The fact that the regime chose to use its air defense system against the Jewish state, he clarified, is a sign of growing confidence and a bolstered security outlook stemming from the support received from Russia and Iran.

According to the officer, Israel’s most serious threat at the moment is Hezbollah. For this reason, the Jewish state will do everything in its power to ensure that the terror organization does not obtain more sophisticated weapons.

Hezbollah currently boasts a missile count ranging from 120,000 to 150,000, most of them aimed at targets in the Promised Land. Moreover, the IDF believes that the terror group is hard at work bolstering these numbers in preparation for the next war with the Jewish state. In fact, according to high-ranking officials, another war between Israel and Hezbollah is “only a question of time.” Officials also estimate that such a war could cause “thousands of civilian deaths” in Israel.

Posted on April 27, 2017

Source: (Bridges for Peace, 27 April 2017)