A man in his 30s was killed and a man in his 50s was seriously wounded in a Hezbollah rocket strike on the city of Nahariya on Thursday, rescue services said.

Police said both men tried to enter a bomb shelter upon hearing warning sirens, but did not get there in time before the rocket smashed into a parking lot outside the residential building where both men were seeking shelter.

Both suffered severe shrapnel injuries, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. Medics declared the death of the younger man at the scene.

Another 13 people were listed in good condition after also being hit by shrapnel or the blast, MDA said, adding that it also treated 11 people for acute anxiety.

All 25 were taken to a hospital.

“I’d never experienced an impact so close. The explosion was the craziest I’ve ever heard in my life,” Noa Avraham, a local mother of three, told the Ynet news site.

“The street filled up with onlookers, glass shards were everywhere and people were crying, mothers holding their kids with blankets over them coming out of apartment blocks,” she said of the aftermath.

The shaken resident described a “feeling of fear, a feeling of distress, a feeling that the north is abandoned, invisible.”

Separately, two people were lightly injured in the Western Galilee by falling fragments following the interception of a Hezbollah drone, first responders said.

Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets at Israel on Thursday, in addition to dozens launched toward troops operating in southern Lebanon, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

During the pre-dawn hours, Hezbollah had also fired several missiles at central Israel, which the IDF said were intercepted.

More forces push into south Lebanon

In Lebanon, at least five people were killed by Israeli strikes, including two killed in a raid on a building in the Nabatieh area, a Hezbollah stronghold in Lebanon’s south, state media reported.

The chief of the IDF Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, said Thursday that the military had killed over 750 Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon since hostilities escalated amid the war with Iran.

Meanwhile, the IDF said it had pushed even more forces deeper into southern Lebanon as part of an expanded buffer zone.

The 162nd Division began a raid several days ago in the western sector of southern Lebanon. The IDF said the “targeted ground operation against key targets” was aimed at expanding “the security zone.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said this week that the IDF would control a “security zone” in southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River, until the threat of Hezbollah is removed.

Military officials said the IDF aims to establish a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, which would be controlled with surveillance and firepower, as well as ground troops in areas deemed strategically necessary.

Before the 162nd Division’s troops pushed into the area, the IDF said it carried out massive airstrikes and artillery shelling to remove threats.

In addition to the 162nd, another four IDF divisions are deployed to southern Lebanon: the 146th is deployed defensively to the western sector; the 91st and 36th are carrying out raids in the eastern sector; and the 210th is stationed in the Mount Dov area.

The IDF has been preparing to deploy a sixth division, the 98th — an elite formation of paratroopers and commando units — as part of its efforts to establish the new security zone and push away the threat of Hezbollah from the border.

“We have expanded the ground operation one step further to widen the security zone. We are operating according to an organized plan to strike and push back the enemy and to distance the threat for better protection of the residents of the north,” Northern Command chief Milo said during an assessment in southern Lebanon on Thursday.

“So far, we have eliminated more than 750 terrorists, destroyed infrastructure throughout Lebanon, and we continue the deep strikes against the organization’s centers of gravity. We are applying pressure on Hezbollah, pushing it northward and destroying its capabilities,” he added, according to remarks provided by the IDF.

Three IDF soldiers have been killed in southern Lebanon amid fighting against Hezbollah. Two civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rockets, and an Israeli civilian was mistakenly killed in the north by Israeli artillery shelling.

Three lines of defense

According to military officials, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir has defined three lines of defense in southern Lebanon as part of the new ground operation.

They include the first line of Lebanese border villages, where the IDF has operated to remove the threat of a Hezbollah infiltration attack; the second and third lines of villages, from which Hezbollah can launch anti-tank missiles on northern Israel; and the Litani River, from which Hezbollah has been carrying out rocket attacks on Israel.

Still, the IDF has said that Hezbollah is launching most of its rocket attacks from deeper within southern Lebanon, including areas north of the Litani River.

In southern Lebanon, the military estimated Thursday that some 70% of the Lebanese population has evacuated, meaning more than 1.2 million civilians have headed north of the Litani and Zahrani rivers.

Separately, the military announced on Thursday that a senior Hezbollah commander in the terror group’s anti-tank missile unit was killed in an Israeli Air Force strike in Lebanon the previous night.

The IDF says Hassan Mohammad Bashir was killed in the Hajir area. Bashir had commanded and advanced hundreds of anti-tank missile attacks against Israeli troops and civilians in the past two years, the military said.

The IDF said that in recent months, Bashir had begun to work with Hezbollah’s anti-tank forces that are based north of the Litani River, “and has since been involved in training many operatives.”

Also on Thursday, the IDF said it had launched a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure sites in southern Lebanon. No further details were provided by the military immediately.

Hezbollah lawmakers boycott Beirut cabinet meeting

In Beirut, ministers from Hezbollah and its ally Amal boycotted Lebanon’s cabinet meeting in protest over the national government declaring the Iranian ambassador persona non grata, a Lebanese official told AFP.

The two Shia parties have a combined four ministers, with one independent Shia also represented in the cabinet present at the meeting, the official said, as the spat over the Iranian diplomat’s expulsion escalated.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report. 

Are you relying on The Times of Israel for accurate and timely coverage of the Iran war right now? If so, please join The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6/month, you will:

Support our independent journalists who are working around the clock under difficult conditions to cover this conflict;

Read ToI with a clear, ads-free experience on our site, apps and emails; and

Gain access to exclusive content shared only with the ToI Community, including weekly letters from founding editor David Horovitz.

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

You clearly find our careful reporting of the Iran war valuable, at a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.

Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically during this ongoing conflict.

So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you'll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

1 Iron from a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off Israeli coast may rewrite the history of war

2 ExclusiveIran ‘present’ touted by Trump was passage of several fuel tankers through Hormuz

3 Trump: Iran wants deal ‘so badly’; White House says campaign ‘very close’ to meeting goals

4 Iran officials reply coldly to truce offer, as US warns of harsher strikes if rejected

5 Trump, fearing slaughter, said to have rejected Netanyahu proposal to jointly call for Iranian uprising

6 9 injured as Iran fires 7 missile salvos at Israel within hours, many with cluster warheads

7 11 Palestinian families evicted after court found Jews owned their East Jerusalem homes before 1948

8 Netanyahu spokesman quits, admits to racist remarks on Mizrahi Jews, attacks on PM

2026 Israel-Hezbollah conflict

IDF Israel Defense Forces

© The Times of Israel