Hezbollah launches explosive drones and missiles at Israeli positions as Israeli airstrikes hit several towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
Violence intensified on the Lebanon-Israel border as Hezbollah launched explosive drones and missiles at Israeli positions and Israeli airstrikes shook several towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
An Israeli airstrike on the town of Aitaroun destroyed five houses and damaged many more, Ali Hijazi, a local official, said Sunday.
“Divine intervention prevented anyone from becoming martyrs. Three women and two men were injured,” he told the Reuters news agency.
Hassan Fadlallah, a senior Hezbollah official, said in a statement to Reuters that the Israeli airstrikes constituted a “new escalation” to which the group was responding with new types of attacks, whether “in the nature of the weapons (used ) or targets. sites”.
The Israeli military earlier said that “suspicious aerial targets” had crossed the border from Lebanon and that two of them had been intercepted. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly injured and several others lightly injured by shrapnel and smoke inhalation, the statement said.
Israeli warplanes carried out “a wide series of strikes against Hezbollah terrorist targets on Lebanese territory,” according to the statement. Sirens sounded in Israel at several locations on the border.
In Beirut, residents saw what appeared to be two warplanes appear in a clear blue sky, leaving vapor trails behind them.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading fire since the Gaza war began two months ago, marking their worst hostilities since the 2006 conflict. The violence has been largely confined to the border area .
Hezbollah says its attacks are aimed at supporting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 18,000 people – mostly women and children – have been killed by Israel in two months.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Beirut would be transformed “into Gaza” if Hezbollah unleashed all-out war.
UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, said in a statement that “the risk of a miscalculation that could trigger a wider conflict is increasing.”
In one of several attacks announced by Hezbollah on Sunday, the group said it launched explosive drones at an Israeli command position near Ya’ara. In another, Hezbollah said it fired Burkan (volcano) missiles, which carry hundreds of pounds of explosives.
Israeli airstrikes were also reported on the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Yaroun, not far from the location of another of the Israeli positions that Hezbollah said it targeted on Sunday.
The airstrikes smashed windows of houses, shops and a school in the nearby village of Rmeich, Toni Elias, a priest from Rmeich, told Reuters by telephone.
Border violence has killed more than 120 people in Lebanon, including 85 Hezbollah fighters and 16 civilians. In Israel, hostilities killed seven soldiers and four civilians.