An unspecified number of the Iranian missiles fired against Israel on Tuesday night impacted near Israeli airbases, damaging office buildings and other maintenance areas but not aircraft or personnel.
The admission changes the understanding of the Iranian attack, which it said had been aimed at Israeli military facilities including two sprawling major airbases at Nevatim and Tel Nof. Video filmed near the bases on Tuesday night during the attack had suggested some missiles had detonated during the latest Iranian assault.
While Israel and its allies immediately pointed to the Iran attack as a failure, the fact that a number of 181 missiles launched in two large waves managed to reach their targets underscores a long-running concern in Israeli security circles that a large-scale ballistic missile attack launched by Iran, Hezbollah or a combination of Iran and its allies would have the effect of overwhelming Israel’s sophisticated missile air defences, allowing some rockets to get through.
Despite the relatively little damage, the fact that Iran had said the attack was targeting the airbases and managed to strike them will be of concern to Israeli planners in the event of future strikes moving to areas with a high civilian concentration.
Israel’s war time civil planning has seen key health care centres and emergency services trained to anticipate exactly this scenario in the event of urban areas being hit during a mass wave of missiles, with one emergency planner telling the Guardian earlier this year his hospital had been told to anticipate mass casualty events occurring over few hours in such a situation.
“There was no damage that stopped the air force’s operation at any stage,” the military said, adding damage to infrastructure and property in civilian areas were “only minor” and likely caused by shrapnel from the interception of missiles.
According to Haaretz, the military declined to quantify what the interception rate to avoid “giving Iran and Hezbollah information that will help them learn lessons” saying only air defences had “operated impressively, with high rates of interception”.
The read out confirms what observers, including Guardian reporters, could see during the attack; the sheer number of missiles, and so closely grouped, in the two waves meant that not all were intercepted.
According to officials in the air force and the Intelligence corps, the missiles Iran fired on Tuesday were the most advanced type it has, although it did not include claimed hypersonic weapons.
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Israel says Iran did succeed in striking airbases during attack, but damage was limited
Israeli media reports that Israel’s military has said Iran did succeed in striking Israeli airbases with missiles during yesterday’s attack, but the attack was “ineffective”.
Writing for the Times of Israel, Emanuel Fabian reports:
The impacts damaged office buildings and other maintenance areas in the bases that do not impact the IAF’s functioning, according to the military. No Israeli Air Force aircraft were damaged in the attack and all of the missile impacts in Israeli airbases are deemed by the IDF as “ineffective,” meaning that no harm was caused to the continuous operations of the IAF.
In the report it is noted that the Israeli air force was able to continue activities after the Iranian attack, continuing to launch airstrikes on targets in Lebanon and Gaza.
One person in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was killed by falling debris from an intercepted missile, and two people were lightly wounded by shrapnel in Tel Aviv. Those are the only known casualties of the attack.
Earlier Iran’s defence minister, Brig Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh, had claimed that 90% of Iran’s missiles had been able to breach Israel’s defences, and that it had only targeted military installations.
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kt comments:
Which explains why Satan-Yahoo has gone ape-shit crazy in vowing dire revenge.
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