New Delhi:
A drone was launched towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in the Israeli town of Caesarea on Saturday, hours after Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed.
Mr Netanyahu’s spokesperson said he was not in the vicinity and there were no casualties in the attack on his residence. “A UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was launched toward the prime minister’s residence in Caesarea. The prime minister and his wife were not at the location, and there were no injuries in the incident,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
Earlier, the Israeli military had said that the drone was launched from Lebanon and it had hit a building. Two more drones that crossed into Israeli territory were intercepted, the military was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The drone attack was not immediately claimed by Hezbollah, which has been trading fire with Israel since last October, or any other militant group.
Israel is also fighting a war with Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. The two sides had exchanged rocket fire since the October 7 attack, with Israel sending ground troops across the Lebanese border last month.
The drone attack comes a day after the Israeli military said it had destroyed Hezbollah’s regional command centre with an air strike. Since late September, the war has left at least 1,418 people dead in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities said two people were killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday in Jounieh, north of Beirut, in the first strike on the area since Hezbollah and Israel started trading fire last year. The health ministry said an “Israeli enemy raid” hit a car in Jounieh, with Lebanese state media saying the attack occurred on a key highway linking the capital to the country’s north.
The tripartite conflict in Middle East is likely to see further intensification after Sinwar was killed in an Israeli operation in southern Gaza. Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks which killed over 1,200 Israelis and brought more than 250 hostages into Gaza, took over as head of Hamas after the killing of its leader Ismail Haniyeh in the Iranian capital Tehran.