TEL AVIV (Dispatches) – The occupying regime of Israel is girding for widely anticipated retaliatory attacks by Iran and Hezbollah, telling settlers to stock up on food and water in fortified safe buildings, while hospitals prepare to move patients to underground wards and search-and-rescue teams position themselves in major cities, reports from the occupied territories say.
The Zionist regime’s security cabinet convened on Thursday night as speculation continued over how Iran and resistance groups might respond to the assassination of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, and of Hamas’s top official while he was visiting Iran.  
Two Israeli officials and a senior Western intelligence official, cited by the New York Times, said that based on the latest information, Hezbollah will likely strike first in a separate attack before Iran conducts its own retaliation.  
The latest escalation follows the assassinations last week of Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader.  
Iran has vowed revenge for the assassination of Haniyeh on its soil, calling it an egregious violation of Iranian sovereignty. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said in an address this week that the group’s response to the assassination of Shukr would be severe.
“Let the enemy, and those who stand behind them, await our inevitable response,” said Nasrallah. “We are looking for a true response, not a superficial one,” he added.
On Thursday, Hezbollah fighters conducted multiple operations, targeting various Israeli military installations in the area in retaliation for attacks on towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of Katyusha rockets at an Israeli military outpost in Manot moshav in the Western Galilee region, targeting a number of Iron Dome missile batteries as well as artillery bunkers.
The rocket attack was conducted in reprisal for the Israeli strike on the village of Doueir in southern Lebanon, it said.
Hezbollah forces also fired several heavy-caliber Burkan missiles at the Zarit barracks, which serves as the headquarters of the Israeli military’s Western Battalion, in response to the Israeli 

aggression against the southern Lebanese town of Majdal Zoun.
They further struck Biranit barracks with a salvo of Burkan missiles, causing damage at the site and sparking a major fire there in retaliation for the Israeli attack on the southern Lebanese village of Aitaroun.
The group said it also hit several other Israeli sites, including the Al-Samaqa site in the occupied Lebanese Kfar Shuba hills, the Ramim barracks and the al-Malikiyah site.
They further targeted espionage devices at the Ruwaisat al-Alam site in the occupied Lebanese Kfar Shuba hills and used a kamikaze drone to target a gathering of Israeli troops at the Al-Marj site.
For the past 10 months, a low-grade war has been underway along the Lebanon border, but the possibility of an escalatory spiral has risen following serious acts of terror by Israel.
Israel and Iran last reached a similar standoff in April in the wake of an Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria. But in that case, Iran’s retaliation was telegraphed well in advance. It fired roughly 300 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel.
This time around, Iran and Hezbollah could fire enough munitions at once to overwhelm Israel’s anti-air missile systems. In addition, they can launch swarms of drones, which fly at low altitudes on unpredictable trajectories and leave little radar signature, making them invisible to the enemy. 
Ansarullah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said Thursday the Yemeni resistance group will coordinate a response to Israeli attacks on Tehran and Beirut with other members of the Axis of Resistance - an alliance including the Yemenis, Hezbollah and fighters in Iraq and Syria.
He added that any decision to respond to the attacks would be made by the axis as a whole.
The Breaking Defense website quoted the commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, stating that the Yemenis now have a more powerful military arsenal than it did a decade ago.
“There’s a line of effort right now that continues to look at all supply coming into the Houthis and … we  don’t believe is necessarily limited to the Iranians,” he said in a webinar hosted by the Center for International and Strategic Studies.  
Compared to a decade ago, the Yemeni fighters have “developed … far beyond the ways we used to look at the Houthis being supplied”, he added.
On Friday, Yemen’s military said it carried out a joint operation against Israel in coordination with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. It said a vital Israeli target was struck in the occupied port city of Umm al-Rashrash, also known as Eilat, with several drones. 
Houthi said the battle against Israel is now at its height. “The Zionist regime’s crime of assassinating Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr has greatly impacted the region’s state of affairs,” he said.