Hezbollah’s barrage of rockets today across northern Israel, killing one Israeli soldier, is aimed at terrorizing a number of Israeli communities. 

According to a statement from the IDF Monday morning, “numerous launches were identified crossing from Lebanon into the areas of Netu’a, Manara, and into an IDF base in northern Israel. The IDF struck the sources of the fire. As a result of the launches, an IDF soldier was killed, and several other IDF soldiers were injured.”

The soldier killed was a woman, according to multiple Israeli press reports. The base that some of the rockets struck is the IDF’s Northern Command headquarters, eight miles from the Lebanese border. The Israeli military’s statement added that the injured soldiers were evacuated for medical treatment at a hospital and their families had not yet been informed.

The by now familiar wail of rocket alert sirens pierced the cool February air above Safed, Meron, and the upper western Galilee as the barrage of Hebollah rockets struck. There was at least one direct hit at Safed, in the historic city’s industrial area, with early reports suggesting that eight people had been injured and transferred to the Ziv Medical Center at Safed. 

It was not immediately clear if the incoming rockets activated the Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries, nor was it clear whether any of the rockets had been intercepted. Also, while there was no immediate claim of responsibility for strikes, it is widely believed that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group carried out this latest attack. 

The day prior, on February 13, Hezbollah’s top terror chief, 

Hassan Nasrallah, said that the group’s cross-border attacks, which have included rocket fire and shelling, would stop only when Israel ceases its “aggression” in the Gaza Strip. Israel is fighting a war to dismantle the Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas attacks of October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were slain in a single day and 245 taken hostage. 

As the prospect of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza is unlikely, with running battles between the IDF and Hamas holdouts continuing, so too does it seem unlikely there will be any quiet coming from southern Lebanon — which is essentially a Hezbollah stronghold. In his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Nasrallah said as much, specifying that “when the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the shooting in the south.”