JERUSALEM: An Israeli sailor was killed and three were missing feared dead yesterday after Hezbollah struck a warship off Lebanon’s coast in a dramatic show of the Shia guerrilla group’s military capabilities.

Friday’s attack marked the Lebanese militia’s first successful strike on an Israeli warship, dealing an unprecedented blow to the Jewish state’s army, by far the most powerful in the Middle East.

The attack was set to raise serious questions about the full extent of Hezbollah’s arsenal. Military analysts and Israeli intelligence officials say the militia has a formidable stockpile of Iranian-made missiles, with ranges up to 200km.

Rescuers recovered the body of one sailor yesterday off the coast of Beirut and the search was continuing for the three others, an army spokeswoman said.

The sailor was the ninth Israeli serviceman confirmed to have been killed since the flare-up of violence sparked by the abduction of two soldiers in a deadly Hezbollah border raid on Wednesday.

The Israeli army said Hezbollah militants had used an Iranian-built anti-ship missile in the attack. The radar-guided C-802 missile, developed by Iran using Chinese technology, has a range of around 100km.

Israeli officials say Hezbollah’s missile stores and launch sites have been among the principal targets of a four-day Israeli air campaign.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted in May that his movement had no fewer than 12,000 missiles in its arsenal, of which around 100 are believed to have the necessary 150km range to reach Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“They might attack Tel Aviv with longer range rockets,” a senior Israeli intelligence official said.

Although the army denied media reports the ship had been struck by an explosives-laden drone, Israeli intelligence officials also believe the militia has the Iranian-made Ababil, or Swallow, attack drone in its arsenal.

Israeli intelligence, however, remains confounded as to why Hezbollah has so far refrained from firing its more potent and longer range rockets at Israeli cities, as it has long threatened.

The longer range rockets, in addition to threatening more distant Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv, carry many times more powerful warheads than the short range Katyushas, the intelligence official said.

“We are debating this,” he said. “Either Nasrallah doesn’t think he needs to fire them, or Hezbollah is deterred by our operation.”

The Israeli warship, which the army said was a SAAR 5 missile corvette, one of the most modern of its fleet, was enforcing a blockade off the coast of Beirut when it was hit.

According to Israeli media, it was 16km from the Beirut coast at the time of the attack and was hit in the stern. The army refused to confirm either detail.

Early yesterday the Israeli corvette remained at sea off the coast of Beirut in a “semi-operational” state, the military said.

A foreign civilian vessel, believed to be Egyptian, was also hit and set on fire, its passengers and crew rescued by a third boat, according to an army spokeswoman, who gave no details of casualties on the ship.

The Israeli army said its vessel had been involved in artillery operations off the Gaza Strip prior to the attack, but a spokeswoman refused to say what role it had played in Israel’s armed assault on Lebanon.

The SAAR 5 is a long-range missile ship designed in co-operation with the Israeli military and first put into service around 10 years ago.

Designed for a 75-man crew, the 85m ship is equipped with a missile launcher, an anti-aerial missile defence system and helicopter pad, according to Israeli public radio. - AFP