Israel at war: What happened on day 403?

Two civilians were killed, and two were wounded as a result of a direct hit from a Hezbollah rocket in Nahariya on Tuesday.

The victims were Ziv Belfer, 52, and Shimon Najam, 54. 

People were forced to take shelter from drone attacks across the North, the military said. One hit the yard of a kindergarten in a Haifa suburb, where the children had been rushed into a shelter, rescue workers said. None were hurt.

In Gaza, the IDF announced the deaths of four more soldiers.

They included Staff Sergeants Orr Katz, Nave Yair Asulin, Gary Lalhruaikima Zolat, and Ofir Eliyahu, who were all killed in battle while fighting in the northern Gaza Strip.

Katz, 20, from Ma’aleh Adumim, was a combat medic. Asulin, 21, from Carmit; Zolat, 21, from Afula; and Eliyahu, 20, from Holon, were combat fighters. All four soldiers were from the Shimshon Battalion (92), Kfir Brigade.

According to the military’s tally, the deaths raised the total of soldiers killed on or since October 7, 2023, to 787.

Of this number, 373 were killed since the start of the military’s ground operations in the Strip on October 27.

Separately, the IDF announced on Tuesday that it has now destroyed the vast majority of Hezbollah’s weapons manufacturing and storage facilities, which had been hidden under civilian locations in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of the Lebanese capital in Beirut.

In the past, these facilities had been used to manufacture hundreds of rockets and missiles used against the Israeli home front.

Military intelligence had been tracking these underground facilities for years, and over recent weeks, the Air Force escalated its focus on destroying them after a previous focus on killing top commanders and destroying deployed rocket cells.

According to the IDF, there have been numerous cases where they struck a site that was nominally for civilian use, but the attack led to blatant secondary explosions that could only have come from Hezbollah’s militarization of Dahiyeh’s civilian sector underground.

More specifically, the military revealed new details about its destruction of a Hezbollah site, including five buildings that it had flagged to the UN in 2020 in the al-Shufiat neighborhood.

The site was used to develop long-range precision rockets that could hit central Israel despite having around 50 civilian families above ground and being only 85 meters from a school.

Further, the IDF said that such a Hezbollah strategy of mixing military and civilian locations had led to the August 4, 2020, disaster in which an accidental explosion from a military Hezbollah site at the Port of Beirut killed 190 civilians and wounded thousands.

In addition, the IDF presented numerous graphics of what the site had held and looked like and videos of their destruction, including secondary explosions.

Despite the announcement, Hezbollah’s killing of two Israelis in Nahariya with rockets on Tuesday and its wounding of seven Israelis on Monday seemed to indicate an inability to end the rocket fire completely just based on military power.

Hezbollah's supplies

Even after the IDF has eliminated many of Hezbollah’s top commanders and as high as 70-80% of key portions of its weaponry, the Lebanese terror group has managed to rain down large volumes of rockets on Israel every day, with no end in sight, absent a ceasefire.

Before the war, Hezbollah had over 150,000 rockets and mortars, which means that it could still have tens of thousands of rockets and mortars left.

A Hezbollah drone crashed near a kindergarten in Nesher, where no alarms sounded.

Drone intrusion sirens sounded throughout the Nahariya, Acre, and Haifa areas, but none sounded in Nesher.

The police reported that “a strike was identified in the yard of a kindergarten in Nesher, causing minor damage to the building. There were no injuries.”

The police also stated that officers were “conducting operational sweeps in the area in response to reports received by the 100 hotline to locate and secure any additional crash sites to eliminate further risk to the public.”

The IDF later confirmed that a hostile UAV had crossed Israeli territory from Lebanon. The military reported that the incident had concluded at 10:20 a.m.

No injuries were reported due to quick thinking by the staff.

The building sustained minor damage, but no staff or children were harmed. The staff of the kindergarten moved all of the children to the shelter as a precaution, even though no sirens were activated.

A father of a child at the kindergarten told Maariv that the staff’s decision to move children to the shelter “truly saved lives.” He added that “within minutes, the kindergarten teacher updated us that the children were safe, protected in the shelter.”

Nearby residents reported hearing a large explosion and seeing smoke in the area. Firefighters were dispatched to deal with the incident.

“We did not have an alert before the UAV exploded near the kindergarten,” said Nesher Mayor Roy Levy to Maariv. We are in discussions with the Home Front Command to understand why no siren was activated. We have been in contact with the parents of the children in the kindergarten; everyone is fine, and we have relocated them to another kindergarten.”

The IDF said it is investigating why no sirens sounded in the area.

There were also sirens in Haifa and Acre, with the military saying that Hezbollah had fired two rockets into the area. The IDF reported that the rockets were intercepted and exploded in midair. The military also reported that the Israeli Air Force intercepted a UAV that crossed from Lebanon into the Western Galilee, where alerts were sounded.

Also in Gaza, combat teams from the Kfir Brigade operated under the 162nd Division in Beit Lahiya on Tuesday.

During the operation, troops located and destroyed several rocket launchers that were aimed to fire toward the surrounding settlements. The IDF also seized Hamas uniforms, military equipment, Kalashnikov rifles, and weapons components.

In one incident, terrorists barricaded themselves in a building from which they fired on troops in the area. After the terrorists were eliminated, the military also destroyed buildings that served as the terrorists’ military headquarters.

Meanwhile, IDF troops attempted to dismantle the illegal outpost Givat Tzur Harel but were pelted with stones by residents, leaving one soldier wounded.

About 50 settlers gathered to attack the soldiers, injuring one soldier who was taken to the hospital with head injuries.

Two people were later arrested as a result of the violence.

The IDF later confirmed that a soldier had been injured by a glass bottle thrown by an Israeli citizen and that he was then taken to the hospital for medical treatment.

Moreover, the military also confirmed that “dozens” of Israeli citizens were involved in the stone-throwing directed at IDF troops.

Troops came to the illegal outpost to carry out an order to dismantle it.

The outpost has been dismantled and rebuilt numerous times over the past two decades since it was first established.

The settlement was the cause of a disagreement between the IDF and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich after the IDF ordered the settlement dismantled in July, but the move was blocked by Smotrich, who also serves as the minister responsible for civilian activity in the West Bank.

At that time, residents also attacked soldiers and police officers who were there to dismantle the settlement.

The Kissufim border crossing has been opened for the passage of humanitarian aid trucks, the IDF and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories jointly announced on Tuesday.

This operation is part of an effort to increase the routes for aid trucks going to the Gaza Strip.

It was coordinated by the IDF via COGAT, the Southern Command, and the Defense Ministry’s Crossing Authority, which included delivering food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment to central and southern Gaza.

The IDF has stated that it is taking measures to facilitate humanitarian aid while continuing its efforts against Hamas forces, though the US and human rights groups remain critical of what they have said has been Israeli backtracking from humanitarian aid promises in October-November since the IDF invaded Jabalya for a third time.

The US had even threatened to freeze arms sales to Israel on Tuesday if it did not make progress toward meeting certain humanitarian aid benchmarks.

The air force also intercepted a UAV over Mitzpe Ramon that was launched from the east.

The Israeli navy announced on Tuesday the name of its sixth nuclear submarine, dubbed “the Dragon,” in a ceremony in Germany, with the naval vessel expected to be delivered to Israel later in 2025, according to foreign sources.

Israeli nuclear submarines have the capability to be armed with nuclear weapons as well as to perform clandestine spying missions all over the world, according to foreign sources.

According to foreign sources, Israel has 80-200 nuclear weapons, including the ability to fire from submarines, which makes it nearly impossible to knock out all of Israel’s reported nuclear weapons in a first strike on its territory.

This virtually guarantees that Israel could counter-strike using nuclear weapons in the event that any adversary attempted a devastating blow against Israel.

Moreover, the IDF said that it marked the start of Germany building the next submarine, the Dakar, which is due to be delivered sometime in the next decade.