Israeli naval forces captured a top Hezbollah operative in northern Lebanon, an Israeli military official said on Saturday.

The operation took place in the northern Lebanese city of Batroun, the official said, without providing the name of the person they detained.

Earlier on Saturday, Lebanese authorities said they were investigating whether Israel was behind the capture of a Lebanese ship captain who was taken away by a group of armed men who had landed on the coast of Batroun on Friday.

“The operation has been transferred to Israeli territory and is currently being investigated,” the official said.

“We were terrified. They were breaking into the apartment next to ours,” Hussein Delbani told The Associated Press near where the man was captured.

“I thought a state agency was conducting a security operation,” said Delbani, who was displaced from southern Lebanon a month ago when war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah.

He said that he saw people on the coast from his balcony and they yelled at him again to come in.

Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamie told Al-Jadeed TV that the man was a captain of civilian ships. He graduated in 2022 and joined the Batroun Institute of Maritime Science and Technology at the end of September to take additional courses.

He spoke shortly after two Lebanese journalists posted a video on social media showing what appeared to be about 20 armed men taking a man away from a house, his face covered with his shirt.

Kandice Ardiel, spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon, denied accusations by some local journalists that the peacekeepers helped the landing force in the operation.

The UN mission, known as Unifil, has a maritime force that monitors the coast.

“Disinformation and false rumors are irresponsible and put peacekeepers at risk,” Ardiel said.

Meanwhile, an attack on a central Israeli town on Saturday wounded 11 people as Iran’s supreme leader vowed a punishing response to Israel’s attack last week and Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza and Lebanon.

Many of the projectiles were intercepted by Israeli air defenses as air raid sirens sounded in parts of the country throughout the day, and others fell in unpopulated areas.

The Magen David Adom emergency service said 11 people were injured by shrapnel and glass fragments in a direct hit against a building in Tira, a predominantly Arab Israeli city.

Images showed extensive damage to the roof and top floor of the three-story building and to the cars below.

The Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said it had used explosive missiles and drones to attack military and intelligence facilities in northern and central Israel.

Hezbollah also said it had attacked the Palmachim air base in central Israel with explosive drones, saying they “obtained precise hits on targets.”

Israel’s military did not confirm whether any of Hezbollah’s three targets had been hit and said it had no comment on the group’s claims.

Hezbollah also said its fighters fired volleys of rockets at towns in northern Israel, including Dalton, Yesud HaMa’ala and Bar Yohai.

An Israeli airstrike in a southern suburb of Beirut on Saturday killed one person and wounded 15 others, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

Israeli warplanes resumed attacks on the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight on Friday, after a four-day pause in the capital.