Soldier killed in rocket attack on northern Israel

Sgt. Ariel Sosnov (Sasonov), 20, was killed and three others were wounded in the Hezbollah attack.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF announced the death Thursday of Sgt. Ariel Sosnov (Sasonov), who was killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack while on duty in northern Israel the previous day.

Sosnov was stationed near Moshav Avivim in the Upper Galilee, which had been targeted by the Hezbollah terror organization Wednesday among several evening barrages that also reached the Haifa bay area and Jordan Valley communities.

The 20-year-old soldier served in the 605th Engineering Battalion of the 188th Armored Brigade. He was promoted one rank upon his death, as is the IDF custom.

Three other soldiers were lightly injured in the same attack, the IDF said.

Sosnov was the second Israeli killed in the aerial assaults on Wednesday.

Sivan Sadeh, 18, lost his life in the fields of Kfar Masryk. He was discovered in his car, seemingly trying to take shelter there when the warning sirens wailed, but a rocket slammed into the earth just meters away and he was killed by the shrapnel.

When the Iron Dome system calculates that an incoming missile will hit an open area, it does not fire an interceptor, as Israel does not have an unlimited number of them and they must be saved for populated locations.

IDF actions against Hezbollah Wednesday included air strikes in the Nabatiya area in southern Lebanon in which the terrorists’ command and control centers and weapons depots were destroyed.

Overnight, using precise intelligence information, the IAF then hit Hezbollah targets in the Beqaa Valley and Beirut, including command posts and military infrastructure.

One of the airstrikes targeted a site near the Lebanese capital’s international airport.

“Hezbollah places its assets in the heart of the civilian population as a method of warfare, and this is another example of the terrorist organization’s exploitation of the civilian space in Lebanon,” the IDF spokesperson said, regarding the Israeli operation.

“Before the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including advance warnings to the population in the area,” the spokesperson added.

In the strikes on the northern valley that has long been a Hezbollah stronghold, the IDF said that it had killed about 60 terrorists in some 20 different places.

In general, the army says, its attacks are part of its unrelenting effort to damage Hezbollah’s military capabilities “and make it difficult for the organization to restore” them.