Soldier killed in Hezbollah drone attack as Israel widens strikes on terror group

Sgt. Rotem Yanai, 20, killed while running to shelter in military zone on northern border, two reservists injured; IDF targets terror sites around Tyre after urging civilians to flee further north

A soldier was killed and two reservists were wounded in a Hezbollah explosive drone attack near the Lebanese border, the military announced Thursday, as fighting along the restive frontier continued to intensify.

Sgt. Rotem Yanai, a 20-year-old service conditions NCO in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion, was killed as she ran to a shelter during a twin drone attack in a military zone on the Israeli side of the border on Wednesday, the army said.

In Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said it had begun striking Hezbollah infrastructure around the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, a day after issuing a sweeping evacuation warning indicating that it would extend operations to areas up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border, with political and military leaders vowing to ramp up operations in Lebanon and expanding a ground campaign.

Yanai, a resident of Giv’at Ada in central Israel, was the 24th soldier to be killed since Hezbollah began attacking Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, after US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic. A civilian contractor has also been killed in southern Lebanon.

A second explosive drone that also took part in the deadly attack Wednesday seriously wounded a reservist and left another reservist in moderate condition.

The drones had triggered sirens in the area as they were detected; however, they were not intercepted.

Israel has struggled to fend off growing attacks on troops in southern Lebanon and northern Israel by Hezbollah’s first-person view drones, which are largely impervious to jamming technology. The terror group has also fired rockets and other types of UAVs, hitting both military and civilian targets.

Another Hezbollah drone was intercepted early Thursday morning over an area of southern Lebanon where Israeli troops are operating, the military said.

The drone and the attempts to shoot it down triggered sirens in several border communities in the Galilee panhandle.

Including Yanai, 11 soldiers have been killed on the Lebanese front since the start of a ceasefire, now largely unraveled, between Israel and Hezbollah last month.

Talks are expected on Friday between Lebanese and Israeli military delegations at the Pentagon, with a new round of direct negotiations aimed at ending the hostilities set for next week.

A delegation comprising six Lebanese officers, headed by the army’s director of operations Georges Rizkallah, will participate in the talks.

A Lebanese military source told AFP the delegation will “emphasize the need for a ceasefire, and will present the army’s plan for a state weapons monopoly and the extension of state authority across the country.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday that Israel is “intensifying operations” in Lebanon by taking strategic positions and reinforcing the security buffer zone as the IDF pushed past the lines it held as it seeks to counter the recent surge in drone attacks.

On Thursday morning, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported two sets of Israeli strikes on Tyre and an area to its east, hitting a building and sparking a fire in Tyre.

The strikes came after the IDF issued an evacuation order for the area, saying it was “compelled to take forceful action” against Hezbollah. It announced in a later statement that it had begun strikes targeting the group’s infrastructure.

In a sweeping evacuation order issued Wednesday, Lebanese civilians were told to flee north of the Zahrani River, extending the potential combat zone deeper inside Lebanese territory.

An Israeli military official said Tuesday that soldiers had begun operating outside the “yellow line,” which runs around 10 kilometers deep inside Lebanese territory.

The latest round of fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group has claimed more than 3,000 lives in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry last week. Several hundred of that number were said to have been killed amid the shaky US-brokered ceasefire.

The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, though sources familiar with Hezbollah’s own casualty figures have said some of the terror group’s fighters aren’t included.

The Israeli military has said that it has killed over 2,000 Hezbollah operatives, including hundreds of members of the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, since hostilities escalated amid the war with Iran.

During the fighting in Lebanon, Hezbollah has fired some 5,500 rockets at IDF troops operating in the south of the country, as well as around 2,500 at Israel, according to the military.

There have been at least 75 rocket impact sites in Israel. In addition, Hezbollah has launched around 300 drones, of which 25 struck Israel, according to the IDF.