Tag: Lebanon

The attack comes after Hezbollah said Israeli forces killed one of its fighters in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese group Hezbollah says it has launched drone attacks on Israeli bases north of the city of Acre in retaliation for the killing of one of its fighters, marking the deepest attack into Israeli territory since the Gaza war began.

Hezbollah launched “a combined air attack using decoy and explosive drones that targeted” two Israeli bases halfway between Acre and Nahariyya, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Iran-backed group said it acted in retaliation for an earlier Israeli attack killing one of its fighters. It published what appeared to be a satellite photo, with the location of the attack symbolised by a flash with a red circle around it.

The Israeli military said it had no knowledge of any of its facilities being hit by Hezbollah, but had said earlier that it intercepted two “aerial targets” off Israel’s northern coast.

Later on Tuesday, Lebanon’s official news agency NNA said at least two people were killed and six others injured after an Israeli air raid hit a residential area in the southern Lebanese town of Hanin.

“Israeli warplanes struck a two-storey house with two air-to-surface missiles, completely destroying the building which was inhabited by a family that had not left the town since Israeli attacks began,” NNA said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military said its air raids killed two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah later confirmed the death of one of its fighters, Hussein Azkoul, but provided no further details.

A separate Israeli attack overnight killed Muhammad Attiya, a fighter in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces, the military said. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on the claim.

Since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack triggered Israel’s war on Gaza, there have been near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.

Israeli attacks have killed about 270 Hezbollah fighters, as well as about 50 civilians.

Hezbollah’s rocket and drone fire has killed about a dozen Israeli soldiers and half as many civilians. The shelling has displaced tens of thousands on each side.

Hezbollah says it detonates ‘explosive devices’ targeting soldiers who crossed the border into Lebanon.

Several Israeli soldiers have been wounded in a blast in Lebanon near the Israeli border, according to the Israeli military and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said on Monday that it had detonated “explosive devices” targeting Israeli soldiers who crossed into Lebanese territory.

In a statement, the group said its fighters planted explosive devices in the Tel Ismail area in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel.

It said its fighters detonated the devices when a patrol of Israeli soldiers crossed into Lebanon and arrived at the area where the devices were planted. The group said the blasts led to “deaths and injuries” although it did not provide any evidence.

An Israeli military official told the Reuters news agency that four Israeli troops were wounded in the overnight blast, which occurred hundreds of metres inside Lebanese territory.

“We confirm that the incident occurred inside Lebanon,” an Israeli army spokesperson told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

It is the first time Hezbollah has claimed such an attack in more than six months of near daily cross-border fire between the group and Israel since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Reporting from Naqoura in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said the attack was “an indication that the situation here is very sensitive”.

“This is not the first time that a bomb or a roadside bomb is being detonated, … but this time [the blast] was really strong,” he said.

The incident comes amid soaring tensions after Iran launched missile and drone attacks against Israel on Saturday in retaliation for a deadly strike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus early this month.

The violence flaring between Israel and Hezbollah has largely been contained to the border area.

Since October 8, when Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel in what it described as solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Israel has attacked it nearly 4,000 times along the 120km (75-mile) border.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 295 fighters from Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon in the past six months as well as about 73 civilians, including children, medics and journalists.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 90,000 people have been displaced by the fighting in southern Lebanon.

On the Israeli side, residents of 28 towns and villages within 2km (1.2 miles) of the border were told to evacuate.

Hezbollah says its military operations against Israel will continue until the Israeli assault on Gaza stops.

Attacks by Iran-aligned group come as Israel anticipates an Iranian response to an air strike on its Syria consulate.

Hezbollah said it has fired “dozens of rockets” at Israeli artillery positions in response to the Israeli military’s strikes in southern Lebanon, in one of its largest assaults since the start of the war on Gaza.

The Iran-aligned armed Lebanese group confirmed in a statement late on Friday that it launched dozens of Katyusha rockets at “enemy artillery positions” in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

The rockets triggered sirens in multiple communities across Upper Galilee in northern Israel, with air defence missiles engaging the incoming projectiles.

The Israeli military said “40 launches were identified from Lebanese territory, some of which were intercepted. The rest fell in open areas.”

“This is a large number of rockets and drones, one of the biggest barrages of the war so far in Gaza,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.

“No injuries were reported,” the Israeli military said, adding that it had earlier intercepted two explosive-laden drones operated by Hezbollah that had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory late on Friday.

Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, and Israeli forces have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the war in Gaza started on October 7. The group has said it will stop its attacks on Israel after a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

While the tit-for-tat attacks have largely remained confined to border regions their frequency and intensity have raised fears of a wider conflict.

Reporting from Tyre in southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said the current regional context makes the Hezbollah launches significant, but the location was important as well.

“Hitting the Golan hasn’t been something normal in this confrontation,” he said.

Hashem said this shows “how the rules of engagement in this confrontation are changing drastically” with attacks increasingly hurting civilians as well as military targets, with more than 60 Lebanese civilians killed compared with several on the Israeli side.

As tensions mount, Israel on Saturday launched at least five air strikes in southeastern Lebanon, an area which is one of Hezbollah’s strongholds, Hashem reported.

Israeli fighter jets targeted a major “military compound” operated by Hezbollah, the air force said on Saturday.

The latest Hezbollah attack comes as the world anticipates an Iranian attack on Israel in retaliation for an air strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria that killed seven members of its armed forces including two generals in charge of Lebanon and Syria operations.

The Israeli military has said it is prepared for an Iranian attack, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz warning Iran that if it uses its own territory to launch attacks, Israel will attack inside Iran as well.

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said Israel is prepared to defend itself on the ground and in the air, in close cooperation with “our partners”, meaning the United States.

“The situation is escalating minute by minute and everyone is anticipating what is going to be the next step,” Hashem said.