Israel at war: What happened on day 407?

Capt. Yogev Pazy and St.-Sgt. Noam Eitan were killed while fighting in northern Gaza, the IDF reported Sunday.

Pazy, 22, from Givot Bar, and Eitan, 21, from Hadera, served in the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade. They were posthumously awarded their rank.

Another soldier from the same battalion was severely wounded in the same incident.

Beginning with the October 7 massacre, 798 soldiers have been killed, according to the IDF, including 376 since ground operations in the Gaza Strip began on October 27, 2023.

On Sunday, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz met with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Mossad Director David Barnea, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Ronen Bar, Defense Ministry Director-General Eyal Zamir, and IDF Hostages Liaison Maj.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon.

Air-raid sirens sounded in the North on Sunday afternoon, Magen David Adom reported. A 13-year-old boy was lightly wounded by a Hezbollah rocket, it said. He was taken to the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, as were other victims suffering from shock, MDA reported.

Hezbollah fired about 15 projectiles into Israeli territory from Lebanon, the IDF reported. The projectiles either crashed in open areas or were intercepted, it said.

IDF intercepts drones as Hezbollah, Houthi attacks escalate

Air-raid sirens sounded in the Western Galilee area after Hezbollah launched three drones into Israeli territory, the IDF reported Sunday evening. The drones were all intercepted, it said.

The IAF intercepted a drone over Rehovot on Sunday, the IDF reported. There were no casualties, but a woman was hurt while hurrying to a protected area, it said.

Residents of Gaza border communities claimed to have seen the unmanned aircraft cruising at a low altitude toward central Israel.

Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for the drone attack, which it said had targeted the Tel Aviv and Ashkelon areas. Air-raid sirens sounded in the Lachish and Shfela areas.

“We carried out a qualitative military operation against the military and vital targets of the Israeli enemy,” the Houthis said, adding that the attack had included a number of drones, and that it achieved its goal.

Later in the day, air-raid sirens were sounded in Eilat, and an Israel Navy vessel intercepted a drone from the east.In another incident, a drone was intercepted by the IAF after penetrating the Arava region.

Last week, the IAF intercepted a drone from the east before it entered Israeli territory. Fragments of the downed drone fell into an open area in the Golan Heights, the IDF reported.

The IDF struck targets across Lebanon on Sunday.

Two Lebanese soldiers died after the IDF struck an army post in the town of al-Mari, in the Hasbaiyya area of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Armed Forces reported in a post on X.

The IDF has mistakenly hit Lebanese soldiers in some instances, but it has not commented on the matter. The IDF has generally tried to avoid hitting soldiers of the Lebanese Armed Forces, which is often opposed to Hezbollah or at least not affiliated with it.

An IAF airstrike on the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh, a suburb of Beirut, killed Mohammad Afif, head of the terrorist organization’s media relations. Hezbollah later confirmed his death.

In late October, Afif said it would “not be long before we have Israeli captives,” adding that Hezbollah did not hold any Israeli captives, but it “came close.”

Earlier in October, Afif had vowed that Hezbollah was “only in the first round” as Israeli ground troops engaged the terrorist organization in southern Lebanon.

After Afif was killed, an Israeli security official told Maariv: “The elimination of this individual, if indeed carried out by Israel, carries significant implications. Firstly, such an action deals a moral blow to the Shia population and Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon.

“On the other hand, it could further impair the organization’s ability to operate both with the Lebanese public and its members. The individual was responsible for propaganda, conveying messages, and was a dominant figure for the organization’s leadership in engaging with the Lebanese public.”

An IAF strike targeted former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s home in Dahiyeh, the IDF reported. A failed assassination attempt was carried out on this house in 2006. Since then, the house has been rebuilt and has been used for Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure, it said.

Before the strike, Lt.-Col. Avichay Adraee, the Arabic-language spokesperson of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, posted on X a map of targets in southern Beirut that Israel was preparing to target.

The Hamas-affiliated Health Ministry said dozens of Palestinians had been killed or wounded by an Israeli strike on a multistory residential building in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. Hamas’s media office said as many as 72 people had been killed.

According to the IDF, the air strikes were carried out against terrorist targets.

“We emphasize that there have been continued recent efforts to evacuate the civilian population from this active war zone, along with efforts to expand the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi,” the IDF said.

The IDF cautioned media outlets reporting on the incident to be wary of being fooled into spreading lies on behalf of Hamas. The IDF “is operating in a precise manner and is undertaking significant efforts to avoid causing harm to civilians,” it said.

Nevertheless, an IDF spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post a probe was ongoing, meaning it was also possible that this was one of a minority number of cases in which the military miscalculated and could have killed more civilians than it thought were present in a certain location or could have misfired.

At the same time, given that the IDF was not sharing more details, the most likely scenario is that little new information will be made public in the weeks or months ahead, at least until the distant future when many more of such incidents are fully reported on.

Meanwhile, a group of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon peacekeepers was fired at while conducting a patrol of villages in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL said Sunday.

The peacekeepers, who were French and Finnish, initially had their path blocked by a group of people, one of whom was armed. The patrol moved around the obstruction and continued along its preplanned route, UNIFIL said.

Nearly an hour later, the patrol was fired upon about 40 times from behind after the peacekeepers had just entered the village of Marrakech, UNIFIL said. Although it said the gunfire was likely from non-state actors, there have been many instances in which Hezbollah has fired on or killed UNIFIL peacekeepers – one of the main reasons UNIFIL failed to keep the terrorist group out of southern Lebanon for the last 17 years.

Even in the event that those firing on UNIFIL were not Hezbollah, they would be Hezbollah- and Iran-affiliated militias, such as from Iraq and Yemen.

The UNIFIL patrol quickly left the area while staying on its route and got safely to the UNIFIL base in Deir Kifa. UNIFIL said it had immediately informed the Lebanese Armed Forces about the incident.

No peacekeepers had been wounded, although some of their vehicles were hit by bullets, UNIFIL said.