The Israeli corvette Hanit was hunting Hezbollah when Hezbollah hunted back—with a weapon nobody believed they possessed.

The Night Hezbollah's Missiles Found INS Hanit

When a C-802 Cruise Missile Struck an Israeli Warship Off Beirut

Hezbollah shocked the world by striking an advanced Israeli warship with a cruise missile no one knew they had.

The Mediterranean was glass-calm on the evening of July 14, 2006, but the crew of INS Hanit wasn't looking at the water. They were watching Lebanon burn. The Israeli Sa'ar 5-class corvette, one of the most advanced warships in the Middle East, had been pounding targets along the Beirut coastline for two days since the Second Lebanon War erupted. At 8:43 PM, four sailors stood on the aft deck, taking a rare moment of stillness between fire missions.

They never heard it coming.

The C-802 anti-ship cruise missile—a Chinese-designed weapon that Hezbollah was never supposed to possess—skimmed the waves at nearly 600 miles per hour. It struck Hanit's port side just above the waterline, detonating against the helicopter hangar. The explosion killed all four sailors instantly: Shai Atias, Yaniv Hershkovitz, Tal Amgar, and Dov Steinschuss.

In the combat information center, alarms screamed to life. The ship's Barak missile defense system—designed precisely to intercept such threats—had been switched to standby mode. Israeli naval intelligence had assessed that Hezbollah possessed no anti-ship capability. The assumption proved catastrophically wrong.

💡 The Hanit's Barak missile defense system could have intercepted the C-802, but was deliberately switched off because Israeli intelligence was certain Hezbollah had no anti-ship missiles.