Rockets, drones fired at Israel

BEIRUT:

Hezbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas said they fired rockets and explosive-laden drones at Israeli positions Saturday to avenge strikes on civilians in Lebanon and Gaza fatalities.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Earlier Saturday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Syrian nationals, including children, had been injured after an “enemy drone targeted an empty four-wheel drive” near their tent, near the border.

Doctor Mouenes Kalakesh who heads the Marjayoun government hospital said a woman and her three children, two of them minors, had been admitted for shrapnel injuries after the strike outside Burj al-Muluk.

Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition after he sustained shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.

Hezbollah said it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on Dafna, an area in Israel’s north that the group said it was targeting for the first time, “in response to the attack on civilians”.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said they also fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee “in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip”.

Later on Saturday, the Iran-backed Hezbollah said it also had launched “explosive-laden drones” targeting “artillery and missile positions” and Israeli troops at a site in the Golan Heights as well as Iron Dome platforms.

Before the drone attack, the Israeli army said a total of 45 “projectiles” had been fired from Lebanon Saturday afternoon, towards the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee, reporting no casualties.

The army said it struck “the launcher... in southern Lebanon from which the projectiles were launched toward the Golan Heights,” also targeting “an additional Hezbollah launcher”.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned his Iran-backed group would hit new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli strikes.

Israeli strikes on Thursday killed at least five people in Lebanon, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group, a security source and militant groups said.

On Tuesday, Lebanese official media said Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed five Syrians, three of them children, with Hezbollah announcing rocket fire at Israel in retaliation.

The violence since October has killed at least 515 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities. AFP