BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters Tuesday said it launched dozens of rockets at northern Israel in response to the killing of two civilians in Lebanon’s south in a strike blamed on Israel.
Hezbollah fighters fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at northern Israel “as part of the response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks on… civilian homes, specifically the horrific massacre in Hanin and the killing and injuring of civilians,” a statement issued by the group said.
Local aid services and state media said two members of the same family were killed in an Israeli military raid on their home in Hanin, near the Israeli border.
Civil defense officials said the attack killed a 50-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl and sent several injured family members to hospital.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) confirmed the death and said six others were wounded in the attack.
“Enemy warplanes carried out a raid on a two-storey house, firing two air-to-surface missiles and completely destroying it,” the news agency said, adding that the building housed “a family that had not left… since Israeli attacks started”.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border since near-daily clashes began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, sparking the Gaza war.
However, Hezbollah has increased its rocket attacks on Israeli positions in recent days.
Earlier, Hezbollah announced that Israel had carried out drone strikes on bases in northern Israel in retaliation for the “significant” killing of its fighters.
This attack targeted Israel deeper than the border areas that the group usually attacks.
Hezbollah announced that it had carried out a combined airstrike using decoys and explosive drones on two Israeli military bases in northern Acre, but Israel claims that no targets were hit.
On Tuesday morning, a Lebanese group announced that a fighter had been killed by Israeli shelling, adding that he was a resident of the area where the vehicle was hit.
Sources close to the Iran-backed group told the media that an engineer working in the group’s air defence force was killed in an Israeli drone attack while he was traveling in a car.
Airstrikes hit the Abu al-Aswad area near the coastal city of Tyre, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) from the border. The vehicle of the fighter was completely destroyed.
Hezbollah also announced in a statement that another fighter was killed by Israel.
The Israeli army announced that it had killed two important terrorists of Hezbollah’s aviation branch in night and morning attacks.
