The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has published video footage gathered from its surveillance aircraft of strategic locations in the northern part of the 1948 occupied territories, including sea and air ports in the city of Haifa.
The group flagged up distribution of the nine-minute 31 second-long footage, including on its Telegram channel, advising viewers on several channels to “watch and analyze important scenes”, including the cryptic message that it shows the “hoopoe had brought back.”
The decision to broadcast the footage, which included images of residential and military sites in and around Haifa, including port facilities, was apparently aimed at Israeli audience.
The footage underlines the mounting difficulties that the Israeli military has encountered in dealing with the drone capabilities of Hezbollah.
There has been no reaction from Israeli political or military authorities on Hezbollah’s drone footage of Haifa yet. Nonetheless, it will surely be seen as a humiliating failure for Israel’s aerial missile systems.
The development came on the same day that Hezbollah announced in a statement that it had carried out a large-scale airstrike against a military site in the Israeli-occupied lands.
The Lebanese resistance movement said in a statement that it launched an aerial attack with a squadron of drones on an artillery position belonging to the 411th Battalion of the Israeli military in Neve Ziv settlement.
The group added that it struck gatherings of Israeli forces, precisely hitting the designated targets and causing casualties in the area.
Hezbollah further said the drone strike was in retaliation for the assignation of its field commander Muhammad Mustafa Ayoub in an Israeli drone strike on the outskirts of Selaa village in the Tyre district.
Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah fighters attacked a Merkava tank inside the Israeli army's Hadab Yarin site with a combat drone. The Lebanese group said it achieved a direct hit.
Hezbollah has been carrying out almost daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions in retaliation for the regime’s aggression against Lebanon and in solidarity with Palestinians.
The genocidal war in Gaza has killed over 37,370 Palestinians, predominantly women and children so far.
At least 455 people have also been killed on the Lebanese border, including more than 80 civilians, according to a tally by AFP.
Two Israeli wars waged against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 were met with strong resistance from Hezbollah, resulting in the retreat of the regime in both conflicts.