The military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for rocket attacks from southern Lebanon towards Israel on Tuesday, at a time when the Palestinian Islamist movement is engaged in a war against the Jewish state.
Israel responded to the shots by targeting positions of pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, in southern Lebanon, which said it had fired on an Israeli armored vehicle.
The Hebrew state was targeted by fire from southern Lebanon for the third consecutive day as a war has pitted it against Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, since Saturday.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, launched a “rocket strike” on Israel’s western Galilee region, a statement from the armed group said, adding that it had “fulfilled its duty.”
During the day, the Lebanese news agency ANI reported “salvos of rockets […] fired from the Qleilé plain, in southern Lebanon,” towards northern Israel, without saying who the perpetrators were.
Shortly before, the Israeli army had indicated on X (formerly Twitter) that its tanks had bombed “two Hezbollah reconnaissance sites in response to rocket fire from inside Lebanese territory towards Israel”.
The army also said one of its helicopters struck another Hezbollah observation post in response to an “anti-tank missile launched from Lebanon at a military vehicle.”
In the evening, Hezbollah, Israel’s bete noire, indicated that it had targeted and destroyed “an Israeli armored vehicle […] west of the so-called Avivim colony, with two guided missiles.
The attack comes “in response to Israeli attacks which targeted several observation points belonging to the Islamic resistance,” added the Shiite party in a statement.
“The atmosphere is bad”
These exchanges of fire took place the day after the death of three militants of the powerful Hezbollah in an Israeli bombardment in the border area.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), deployed in southern Lebanon, said it had “detected rocket fire from southern Tyre,” a town close to the border, around 5:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. in Quebec).
“We remain in contact with authorities on both sides of the Blue Line [fixant la frontière entre les deux pays] to defuse this very dangerous situation,” added the peacekeepers, calling for “restraint during this critical period.”
Hours earlier, AFP correspondents in the Goren region in northern Israel saw soldiers moving tanks and manning roadblocks.
“Things are tense here. The atmosphere is bad, it’s like a war situation,” said Yaakov Regev, 67, a resident of Kalanit in northern Israel.
“We are not afraid,” says Aharon Hillel, 62, from the border town of Alma.
“We don’t care about [Hassan] Nasrallah or Hezbollah or whatever,” he said, referring to the Shiite party leader. “For us, they are […] insignificant. »
On Monday, Israel carried out a bombing near the Blue Line after announcing that it had killed “several armed suspects” who had infiltrated its territory from southern Lebanon.
These infiltrations were claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which says it supports Hamas in the war against Israel.