Report: Hezbollah staged offshore 'operation' last Wednesday

Hezbollah’s sending of three drones on Saturday towards Israel’s gas installations in the Karish field was not the group’s “first operation,” the pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar reported on Wednesday.

“It was preceded by another operation that took place on Wednesday,” al-Akhbar added.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Tuesday that Hezbollah’s launching of the three drones was not the first such activity, mentioning that there had been “multiple attacks.”

"Multiple attacks were carried out against Israeli gas rigs. Israel will not accept this kind of aggression against its sovereignty and whoever does it must know that they are taking a risk," Lapid said in Paris.

"Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks," he warned.

Until Tuesday, neither Israel nor Hezbollah had mentioned anything about previous “attacks” on Israel’s gas rigs.

Israeli news website ‘Walla’ had reported Friday that in 2016, “divers from Hezbollah's elite force reached, at least in one case, to the maritime border area and crossed into the Israeli side to examine the Israeli underwater technology.”

“In another case that year, a buoy placed by the navy on the border fell into their hands and was swept to the Lebanese side,” Walla added.