BERIUT: A Lebanese security source said six Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday. The group claimed responsibility for attacks on northern Israel and for low-flying Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier over Beirut.
Since the Palestinian militia's attack on Israel on October 7 triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israel almost daily in support of its ally Hamas.
Tensions have escalated over the past week as Iran and its allies vowed revenge for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which Israel blamed, and the killing of Hezbollah's top military commander Fuad Shukr in a southern suburb of Beirut in an Israeli strike.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said an “Israeli enemy attack on a house in the town of Mayfadun” near the southern city of Nabatiyeh killed five people, while another Israeli attack in the Adaysseh area left one person dead.
The dead in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because the matter was sensitive.
Hezbollah announced that five fighters had been killed, but did not provide information about the location of the deaths.
The Israeli military said its air force had “hit a Hezbollah military structure” in the Nabatiyeh area that had been used to “carry out terrorist attacks” against Israel.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility on Tuesday for several attacks on Israeli positions, including one with “explosive-laden drones” on a barracks north of the coastal city of Acre.
The Israeli military said that “several enemy UAVs (drones) were identified flying over from Lebanon,” adding that “several civilians were injured south of Nahariya” near Akko.
It was later reported that an initial investigation had shown that one of the interceptor missiles “missed the target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians.” The incident is currently being investigated, it added.
The Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said paramedics treated “a 30-year-old man in serious condition and a 30-year-old woman in light to moderate condition with shrapnel injuries.”
Hezbollah said the drone attack was a response to an airstrike on the southern village of Ebba on Monday, which the Israeli military said targeted a commander of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force unit.
Low-flying Israeli military planes broke the sound barrier over Beirut on Tuesday ahead of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese National News Agency, a security source and AFP journalists reported.
Nasrallah gave a televised address a week after the killing of Shukr, whom Israel described as the group's “highest-ranking military commander” and Nasrallah's “right-hand man.”
According to an AFP count, around 556 people have been killed in cross-border violence in Lebanon since October, most of them fighters, but also at least 116 civilians.
On the Israeli side, according to army sources, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians were killed, including in the annexed Golan Heights.
Diplomatic efforts are in full swing to avert a regional conflagration and a full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought each other in the summer of 2006.
