Hezbollah forces resumed rocket and artillery attacks against Israel on Friday, ending a calm along the border following Israel’s killing of the Lebanese group’s military commander in Beirut.
Hezbollah said it fired a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli warplane flying in Lebanese airspace overnight, forcing it to turn back. It said its forces also launched two artillery strikes and two rocket attacks on military targets in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had successfully destroyed an aerial target coming from Lebanon into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
According to Lebanese state media, several villages in southern Lebanon were hit by Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling on Friday. At least five Syrian migrant workers were killed in an Israeli attack in southern Lebanon a day earlier, according to medics.
The Israeli military also said it had targeted two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an address on Thursday that he had ordered calm along the border following an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday that killed military commander Fuad Shukr, paying respect to the victims and considering next steps.
An Iranian military adviser and five civilians were also killed in the attack on Dahiyah, a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah would retaliate, but it would have to study what their response would be, otherwise it would resume its normal military operations against Israel.
A fierce exchange of fire has been going on between Hezbollah and Israeli forces for nearly 10 months, parallel to the Gaza war, which has been mostly confined to the border area.
But attacks over the past week threaten to turn the conflict into a full-blown regional war.
Israel and the United States have accused Hezbollah of killing 12 young men in a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on July 27, a claim Hezbollah denies.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, told Reuters on Friday it had not investigated the incident because the Israeli-occupied Golan is outside its area of operations.
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