What we know about Qader-1 ballistic missile fired by Hezbollah on Tel Aviv

Lebanon's Hezbollah unveiled the Qader-1 ballistic missile which was launched for the first time in its war with Israel on Wednesday, targeting the headquarters of the Mossad intelligence agency in Tel Aviv.

The group - one of the world's most powerful non-state actors - said it had targeted the Israeli intelligence agency which had planned recent attacks using pagers and wireless devices earlier this month.

The attack marked the first time that Hezbollah struck this deep into Israel, and did so using a guided system.

Warning sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as the surface-to-surface missile was intercepted by Israeli air defence systems, according to the Israeli military.

"This is a new level of escalation by Hezbollah we haven’t seen before," Fabian Hinz, a research fellow for Defence and Military Analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies told the outlet Breaking Defense.

"It is the first time Hezbollah has ever claimed to have used ballistic missile [and they] are guided," Hinz said.

"We've seen Hezbollah use shorter range rockets before, [and] we’ve seen them use some of the slightly longer range rockets that they also used in 2006."

So what do we know about Hezbollah's Qader-1 missile?

A precision-guided, short-range ballistic weapon

According to the Lebanese group, which is one of the world's most powerful non-state actors, the Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) has a diameter of 620mm, a length of over 7.6 meters (around 25 feet), weighs 2,870 kilograms (6,327 pounds), and is equipped with more than 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds) of explosives. It reportedly has a range of 190 kilometres (about 118 miles).

It is also reported to be capable of manoeuvring during flight and was developed with a high degree of accuracy to strike its intended targets.

In a video released by the group on Wednesday, the ballistic missile is shown on its launcher, which is believed to be located in an underground complex.

The Iranian-made Qader, Ghadr in Farsi, was first unveiled in 2007, and used by Iran in 2015. It is a variant of Iran's Shahab-3 missile, which Iranian aerospace engineers used to develop the country's space program, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The Qader missile was Iran's first anti-submarine ballistic missile, according to local media news site Lebanon Debate.

It is one of many other types of ballistic missiles in Hezbollah's arsenal.

Last week, the group unveiled new weapons used in its war against Israel, including the Fadi 1 rocket, which is 220mm in calibre and has a range of 80 kilometres (49.71 miles), and the Fadi 2 rocket, which is 303mm in calibre with a range of 105 kilometres (65.24 miles). They were reportedly unguided missiles.

Meanwhile, the local news outlet Al-Modon reported that the latest conflict between Hezbollah and Israel came with "new methods and mechanisms that differ from previous wars".

It said that Israel was expanding and escalating the conflict and moved to a stage of targeting residential and heavily populated areas as part of a strategy to exert pressure on Hezbollah.