Israel knocks out coastal radar in Lebanon

NY Times:

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Israel greatly widened the scope of its airstrikes on Saturday, attacking for the first time in the north, at major port areas like Jounieh and Tripoli, and hitting roads in the south and the east. On one of those roads, an airstrike hit a civilian convoy, destroying two vehicles and killing at least 16 people, most of whom were children, Lebanese security officials said.

Israeli aircraft also fired a missile at the new lighthouse in the Manara district in central Beirut, the farthest north within the capital that has been struck.

An Israeli commander, Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, said that the new strikes at Lebanese port areas were meant to take out sea radar installations that were instrumental in the attack on Friday that heavily damaged an Israeli ship, killing one sailor. Three others are missing. The ship returned to Israel on Saturday.

In that incident, the military said Saturday that the ship had been struck by a radar-guided C802 missile supplied by Iran, not by a drone aircraft, as previously reported.

General Nehushtan said the missile, which was fired from the Lebanese coast, was part of a system that required direct training from Iran. “We see this attack as a very clear fingerprint of Iranian involvement,” he said.

Dozens of the Iranian fighters are in Lebanon, and they have been working with Hezbollah for more than two decades, the military says. Iran provides a large part of the group’s financing and weaponry.

He described Saturday’s bombing as a continuation of a strategy to close off routes that Hezbollah could use to bring in weapons.

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Iran has denied that it has military in Lebanon or that it was connected with the strike on the ship. They are probably parsing in farsy.