JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a drone was launched towards his residence in Caesarea on Saturday after the military reported a drone from Lebanon had “hit a structure” in the central Israeli town.
Neither he nor his wife were home, and there were no casualties, said his spokesperson in a statement.
“A UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) was launched towards 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,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear whether the structure reported hit by the military earlier was his private residence.
The military said three drones had been fired from Lebanon on Saturday, and it had intercepted two.
A barrage of projectiles were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Saturday, with sirens blaring across northern Israel at regular intervals.
The strikes into Israel come as its conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a Hamas ally backed by Iran, has intensified in recent weeks.
Hezbollah announced on Friday that it planned to launch a new phase of fighting by sending more guided missiles and explosive drones into Israel.
The militant group’s long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in late September, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon earlier in October.
Lebanese authorities meanwhile 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.
Israel is fighting a war against Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Israel sending ground troops across the Lebanese border last month.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it had destroyed Hezbollah’s regional command centre with an air strike.
Hezbollah said it fired a salvo of rockets at the Israeli city of Haifa and areas to its north.
The group later said it launched “a swarm of explosives-laden drones” at an “air missile defence base” east of the central Israeli city of Hadera.
A standoff is also ongoing between Israel and Hamas, which it is fighting in Gaza, with both sides indicating resistance to ending the conflict after the death of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, this week.
On Friday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated that Sinwar’s death was a painful loss but noted that Hamas had persisted despite the killings of other Palestinian militant leaders before him.
“Hamas is alive and will stay alive,” Khamenei said.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)
