Hezbollah said it fired “dozens” of missiles into northern Israel on Thursday in revenge for a deadly strike in south Lebanon, a day after its leader delivered a scathing speech.
Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese movement affiliated with Hamas, have exchanged cross-border fire on a near-daily basis since the Palestinian terrorist group’s October 7 strike on Israel, which sparked the Gaza Strip war.
Fears of a regional war grew as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday that “no place” in Israel would be spared in the event of an all-out attack against his organization, and threatened the adjacent island nation of Cyprus if it opened its airports to Israel.
On Thursday, Hezbollah claimed that “in response to the assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out in the village of Deir Kifa,” fighters hit an Israeli barracks “with dozens of Katyusha rockets.”
According to Lebanon’s official National News Agency, one person died after a “enemy drone” attacked a vehicle in south Lebanon’s Deir Kifa district.
Hezbollah said one of its men had been slain. An anonymous source close to the group told AFP that he was killed in the Deir Kifa attack.
The Israeli military stated an air strike “eliminated” a Hezbollah operator in the Deir Kifa area, claiming he was “responsible for planning and carrying out terror attacks against Israel and commanding Hezbollah ground forces” in south Lebanon’s Jouaiyya area.
In addition, Israeli fighter jets targeted “a Hezbollah surface-to-air missile launcher that posed a threat to aircraft operating over Lebanon,” according to an army statement.
The exchanges between the foes, who last went to war in 2006, have increased in recent weeks, with the Israeli military announcing Tuesday that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated”.
Following the Hezbollah leader’s threats against Cyprus, Lebanon’s foreign ministry stated on Thursday that “relations between Lebanon and Cyprus are based on a rich history of diplomatic cooperation”.
Contacts and conversations between the two countries continue “at the highest levels,” according to a foreign ministry statement, which made no mention of Nasrallah’s remarks.
According to an AFP assessment, cross-border fighting has killed at least 479 people in Lebanon, the majority of them are fighters, but there are also 93 civilians.
Israeli authorities report that at least 15 troops and 11 civilians have been murdered in the country’s north.