The Lebanese branch of the Qassam Brigades said the barrage was in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Gaza.
The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas said it fired a barrage of rockets at Israel from southern Lebanon in response to Israeli strikes on Gaza.
In a statement posted on Telegram on Monday, the Lebanese branch of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades said it had launched 16 rockets targeting the northern Israeli town of Nahariya and the southern suburbs of the city of Haifa.
Israel said it had identified around 30 launches from Lebanon within an hour. “IDF responds with artillery fire towards the source of the fire,” the Israeli army posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Qassam Brigades said the rockets were in retaliation for the “massacres and aggression against our people in Gaza,” where Palestinian authorities say relentless Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 10,000 people since fighting began on October 7 after a Hamas attack in southern Israel. which, according to Israeli authorities, killed more than 1,400 people.
While Gaza has been the focus of attacks so far, tensions have remained high on the Israel-Lebanon border, where several armed groups, including the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah, have exchanged limited fire with the Israeli forces for almost a month.
Such cross-border exchanges have left at least 81 dead in Lebanon, including 59 Hezbollah fighters, as well as six soldiers and two civilians on the Israeli side, according to a count by the AFP news agency.
The Qassam Brigades did not give further details in their statement, but the rocket attacks towards Haifa constitute the furthest target from Lebanon since the start of clashes along the border.
Reporting from Beirut, Al Jazeera correspondent Zeina Khodr said an Israeli strike on a vehicle on Sunday killed three children and their grandmother. Hezbollah said it responded by firing rockets into the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, killing an Israeli civilian.
“On Friday, (Hezbollah) Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah promised that any civilian killed in Lebanon would be responded to with an attack in Israel killing a civilian. So he established, if you will, this equation,” Khodr said.
Analysts have expressed concern that Israel’s war on Gaza could trigger a broader regional escalation, with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed armed groups joining the fight against Israel amid dire humanitarian conditions. in Gaza are reaching their breaking point.
So far, both sides have managed to avoid the kind of measures that could trigger a wider confrontation, opting instead for a steady campaign of bombings and missile strikes.
“Both sides truly understand the consequences of the extension of the conflict to southern Lebanon,” Khodr said.