(Beirut) The Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah claimed Tuesday to have launched “more than 100 rockets” at Israeli military positions, in retaliation for an Israeli air strike which left one dead the day before in eastern Lebanon.
Since the start of the war on October 7 between Israel and Hamas, violence has been daily between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, and the threats of open war are increasing.
In a press release, the pro-Iranian movement indicated that it had launched “more than a hundred Katyusha-type rockets” on two military bases on the Golan, a Syrian plateau annexed by Israel and bordering Lebanon.
He said he acted “in response to Israeli attacks against our people, our villages and our towns, most recently near the town of Baalbeck where a citizen was killed.”
On Monday evening, Israeli airstrikes killed one person near Baalbeck, in eastern Lebanon. This is the second Israeli raid on this Hezbollah stronghold since the start of cross-border clashes.
The Israeli army confirmed strikes by its “fighter planes” against “two sites” of “Hezbollah air forces” in the eastern Bekaa plain, “in retaliation for Hezbollah air attacks in recent days towards the Golan.”
On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbeck for the first time, around 100 kilometers from the border and close to Syria, killing two Hezbollah ranks.
Hezbollah says it will only end its attacks on Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant recently warned that a possible truce in Gaza would not undermine Israel’s “objective” of pushing Hezbollah from its northern border, by force or diplomacy.
On Tuesday, the pro-Iranian party announced that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had met with the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, Khalil al-Hayya.
The two discussed ongoing talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire in Gaza and attacks carried out by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, according to the statement.
Hassan Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday.
Since the start of cross-border violence on October 8, at least 317 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters and 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.
On both sides of the border, incessant exchanges of fire have displaced tens of thousands of people. In Israel, ten soldiers and seven civilians died.