LONDON, July 14: The Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon possesses about 100 missiles with a range of 150km enabling it to hit Tel Aviv, according to the London specialist magazine Jane’s defence weekly.
Quoting Israeli intelligence sources, it said Hezbollah probably had a total of 10,000 to 15,000 missiles provided by Syria and Iran.
They included the Iranian-made Fajr-5 with a range of some 75km enabling it to reach the Israeli port of Haifa, and the Zelsal-1 with an estimated 150km range, which meant it could hit Tel Aviv.
“As far it is known, Hezbollah has never fired any of these weapons,” the magazine’s Middle East correspondent Ed Blanche wrote in an article published on July 5.
In the same article, Jane’s quoted Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Hezbollah leader, as saying on May 23 that his organisation possessed 12,000 missiles.
“None of the figures can be verified,” the magazine said.
Hezbollah denied Thursday Israeli claims that it had fired rockets on Israel’s third largest city Haifa.
Israel had threatened to attack residential areas of Beirut should Hezbollah fire rockets at Haifa, as the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement had earlier threatened.—AFP
