(Beirut) Seven Hezbollah fighters died Friday, according to the armed Islamist movement, in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon which also killed a child, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7, cross-border exchanges of fire between pro-Iranian Hezbollah and Israel have been almost daily.
The ministry reported a total death toll of eight in the Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. It said that an “Israeli enemy drone strike” killed two people, including a seven-year-old child, in Aita al-Jabal, and that three other Israeli strikes killed six people in three other locations.
Hezbollah said seven of its fighters were killed in the Israeli strikes. The armed Islamist movement claimed responsibility for 13 attacks on Israeli positions on Friday, including “several salvos of rockets.”
The Israeli army counted between 90 and 100 projectiles fired from Lebanon towards northern Israel, some of which were intercepted.
It said its planes had “eliminated” members of a “terrorist cell that planned to fire projectiles from the Tayr Harfa region.” A source close to Hezbollah told AFP that three of its fighters had been killed in the strike.
According to the Israeli military, its aircraft also “struck and eliminated” a “senior terrorist from Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit in southern Lebanon” in Aita al-Jabal, identifying him as Mohammad Mahmoud Najem.
Later in the day on Friday, the group paid tribute to Najem as a fighter.
The official Lebanese National News Agency (ANI) reported that “two guided missiles” targeted a house in Aïta al-Jabal.
Hezbollah says it carries out attacks against Israel to support its Palestinian ally, the Islamist movement Hamas.
Fears that the violence could escalate into all-out war have been heightened since the death of a Hezbollah military leader in late July, killed by an Israeli strike in Lebanon, and that of the former Hamas leader in Iran, who accused Israel of assassinating him. Hezbollah and Tehran have vowed to retaliate.
Since October, violence has left more than 600 dead in Lebanon, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP count.
In Israel and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians were killed, according to Israeli authorities.