(Beirut) Five Hezbollah fighters and two civilians were killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Sunday, the Lebanese Islamist movement and state media announced, with the Israeli army declaring it had “eliminated” seven members of the pro-party. Iran.
Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has regularly exchanged cross-border fire with Israel since the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 in southern Israel, which sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier on Sunday, the official Lebanese news agency (ANI) reported that Israeli strikes targeted motorcycles in three border villages in southern Lebanon, killing two in Hula, two “civilians” killed in Aita al-Shaab and unspecified victims in Naqoura.
Other areas were also affected, according to the same source, reporting fires in several places due to the bombings, including a fire caused, according to the agency, by incendiary phosphorus bullets.
In the evening, Hezbollah said five fighters had been killed.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israeli army, for his part declared that the army had “eliminated […] seven Hezbollah terrorists in several air attacks” in southern Lebanon.
The army had clarified a little earlier that it had struck “two Hezbollah terrorists identified as operating” in the Aita al-Shaab region.
After the attacks, the powerful Lebanese movement claimed responsibility for at least 14 attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Sunday, including barrages of “dozens” of rockets, saying it launched some in retaliation for strikes on villages in the south. from Lebanon.
Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency services said it treated a “40-year-old man suffering from minor injuries from the explosion” after warning sirens sounded in the Kiryat Shmona area in the north of the country.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah has intensified its cross-border attacks, which it says support Gaza residents and its ally Hamas, while the Israeli army strikes deeper and deeper into Lebanese territory.
The violence left at least 440 dead in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also 84 civilians, according to an AFP report.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed on its side of the border.