BEIRUT: Official media in Lebanon said a Zionist strike Sunday on a southern village killed four family members, with Hezbollah announcing retaliatory attacks, in the latest cross-border violence since the Gaza war erupted. The Zionist entity and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group have exchanged regular cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas’ unprecedented Oct 7 attack on the Zionist entity.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks, with Hamas ally Hezbollah stepping up its attacks on the Zionist entity north, and the Zionist military striking deeper into Lebanese territory. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Sunday’s strike in Mais Al-Jabal killed "four people from a single family”, reporting that the raid was carried out by Zionist aircraft. It identified the dead as a man, a woman and their children aged 12 and 21, and said two other people were wounded. A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, confirmed the strike killed "four civilians”.
Mais Al-Jabal municipality chief Abdelmoneim Shukair had earlier told AFP that three people were killed, saying they were a couple and their son. The Zionist military said in a statement later Sunday that "this morning... fighter jets struck a military site in the area of Mais Al-Jabal”, without providing further details.
Hezbollah in a statement said it fired "dozens of Katyusha and Falaq rockets” at Kiryat Shmona in the Zionist entity "in response to the horrific crime that the (Zionist) enemy committed in Mais Al-Jabal”. It later said it fired dozens more Katyusha rockets across the border "as part of the response” to the Mais Al-Jabal strike, and claimed a string of other attacks on the northern Zionist entity, some in stated retaliation to the raid.
The Zionist army said in the statement that "approximately 40 launches were identified crossing from Lebanon... a number of which were intercepted.” "No injuries were reported,” it said, adding the army "struck the sources of the fire”. It also said "fighter jets struck Hezbollah military structures and terrorist infrastructure” in several areas of southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s NNA reported Zionist strikes on various locations in the country’s south.
Hezbollah has repeatedly declared that only a ceasefire in Gaza will end its attacks on the Zionist entity, which it says are in support of Gazans and Hamas. Both the United States and France have made diplomatic efforts to calm tensions on the Lebanese-Zionist border. In Lebanon, at least 390 people have been killed in nearly seven months of cross-border violence. – AFP