Hezbollah, Israel trade cross-border fire after lethal strike in Lebanon

BEIRUT

Lebanese group Hezbollah exchanged cross-border attacks with Israeli forces on Wednesday following a deadly airstrike that killed two people in southern Lebanon.

A woman and her niece were killed and six other people injured when Israeli fighter jets struck a house in the town of Hanin on Tuesday.

Hezbollah said its fighters attacked with “appropriate weapons” a gathering of Israeli soldiers in Avivim and Harish Na'tuah in northern Israel.

Israeli Channel 14 said a rocket attack from Lebanon caused a fire at a house in the Avivim settlement in the Upper Galilee.

No injuries were reported.

Hezbollah said it fired a barrage of rockets and anti-tank shells at the Shomera settlement in northern Israel and the Rahab border site in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese group said Wednesday’s attacks were in response to Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army, for its part, said it attacked 40 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

Military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X that fighter jets struck a rocket launcher in the town of Tyre Harfa from where rockets were fired at Shomera in northern Israel.

Airstrikes also targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and military compounds in the towns of Tyre Harfa, Ayta al-Shaab and Marwahin, he added.

According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, Israeli warplanes carried out more than 13 airstrikes in the towns of Ayta al-Shaab, Ramia, Jabal al-Butah, and Khallet Warda in the southern part of the country.

Artillery shelling also targeted the towns of Yaroun, Maroun al-Ras, Alma al-Shaab and Ad-Dahiyra.

No reports were yet available about casualties.

Tensions have escalated along Lebanon’s border with Israel since last October, when the Israeli army launched a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 34,200 people following an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have since engaged in intermittent exchanges of fire in the deadliest clashes since the two sides fought a full-scale war in 2006.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul