Hezbollah said it fired rockets at northern Israel on Thursday “in response” to a deadly Israeli attack in southern Lebanon – the group’s first attack since Israel killed a top commander earlier this week.
The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets at (the southern village of Shama) in response to an attack by the Israeli enemy…, killing several civilians”.
The Israeli military said that shortly after the rockets were fired, the air force “strike[ed]the Hezbollah launcher from which the missiles were being fired”.
Earlier on Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry said four Syrians were killed in an Israeli attack in the south, where there has been almost daily exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel since the Gaza war began in October.
“The Ministry of Health announces that four Syrian citizens were martyred in an “Israeli attack” on the southern village of Shama,” the health ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the death toll may increase after DNA testing.
It said five Lebanese civilians were also injured in the attack.
Emergency services told AFP the deceased were farm workers and members of the same family.
A photographer assigned to AFP said plumes of smoke rose from the site of the attack, which caused heavy damage to two nearby buildings and burnt down a vehicle.
The attack was Hezbollah’s first since the killing of its top commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday evening. Leader Hassan Nasrallah said the operation would resume on Friday morning.
Nasrallah warned that his group was bound to respond to Shukr’s killing.
His killing on Wednesday came just hours after Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hezbollah’s ally Hamas, was assassinated in Tehran, in an attack that Iran and Hamas have blamed on Israel. Israel has declined to comment on the killing.
At least 542 people have been killed on the Lebanese side in the violence since October, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
At least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including in the Golan Heights, according to army figures.
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