Israel Says It Shot Down Missile Over Tel Aviv

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile Wednesday that Hezbollah fired at Tel Aviv, in what appeared to be the militant group’s deepest attack into Israel in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.

The surface-to-surface missile, which triggered alerts in Tel Aviv and Netanya, was shot down by Israel’s air defense, the military said. Air raid sirens sent residents fleeing into shelters in the early morning hours. Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization, said it had not received calls regarding injuries.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon, said in a statement that it had launched a ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. The group said the attack was in retaliation for the assassination of its leaders and the explosion of pagers that incapacitated many of its members.

Those attacks last week targeting Hezbollah leaders were followed by a barrage of Israeli airstrikes against the group in Lebanon since Monday, killing more than 500 people, according to Lebanese authorities. The attacks have brought the two sides closer to all-out war than ever before.

The Israeli military said its air force had struck the launcher from which the missile was fired, in Nafakhiyeh in southern Lebanon.

Since the war in Gaza broke out last October, Israel and Hezbollah have been trading attacks across Israel’s northern border, driving tens of thousands of people from their homes in the country’s north.

But Tel Aviv in central Israel has been largely sheltered from the conflict even as tensions escalated just tens of miles to the north and to the south. As recently as Saturday, families were flocking to beaches and businesses were bustling in the city, 70 miles from the border with Lebanon.

Since Sunday, Hezbollah has launched more than 500 missiles, rockets and drones into Israel, most of which were intercepted, appearing undeterred by a string of attacks by Israel on the group last week.

Hezbollah, which many analysts consider the most powerful of the Iranian proxy groups and the biggest military threat to Israel, has spent years building military capacity since its war with Israel in 2006. The group is estimated to possess between 120,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.