(Beirut) Hezbollah announced that it had launched dozens of rockets on northern Israel on Thursday, in response to a strike that killed four Syrians in southern Lebanon, the first attack by the Lebanese group since the assassination of one of its military leaders on Tuesday evening.
Hezbollah fighters “launched dozens of Katyusha rockets” at the Matzuva kibbutz, the pro-Iranian movement said in a statement, “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on the town of Chamaa which killed several civilians.”
The Israeli military said many of the projectiles had crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon, adding that it had intercepted some of them. “The rest fell in open areas,” it said.
Shortly after the shooting, Israeli aircraft struck the location “from where the projectiles were fired in the Yater region” in southern Lebanon, the statement added.
Earlier on Thursday, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported four Syrians killed and five Lebanese wounded in an Israeli strike in Chamaa in the south, where Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging daily fire for nearly ten months.
Due to the “large quantity of tattered bodies, the final number of martyrs will be determined on the basis of DNA tests,” the ministry said.
A local rescuer told AFP that the victims worked in agriculture and belonged to the same family.
Plumes of smoke rose from the scene of the strike, where a building was partially destroyed, in front of which the carcass of a vehicle still burning was visible, according to an AFP contributor.
The rocket attacks come as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his party had toned down its attacks since Tuesday night’s strike against the party’s military leader Fouad Chokr, which killed seven people, including five civilians.
He added that they would resume on Friday morning and promised to respond to “the aggression” against the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.
Hours later, another strike blamed on Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Cross-border violence between Hezbollah and Israel began shortly after the start of the Gaza war, sparked by a Palestinian Hamas attack on Israeli soil. It has left at least 542 dead, mostly fighters, but also 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
At least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians were killed on the Israeli side, including twelve young people in a rocket attack on the Golan Heights, according to army figures.