At least two Israeli strikes targeted a town near the capital in southern Lebanon, leaving 14 injured, a security source told AFP. The Israeli army said it had attacked “Hezbollah weapons depots.”
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Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, deadly exchanges of fire between the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Israeli army have occurred regularly on the Israel-Lebanese border.
An AFP photographer heard at least two explosions a few seconds apart in Ghaziyeh, around thirty kilometers from the border with Israel.
According to him, one of the raids targeted a warehouse near the coastal road, over which a thick cloud of smoke rose. Ambulances were on site.
According to the official National News Agency (ANI), the strikes targeted a warehouse producing tires and electrical generators and the surrounding area of a factory, leaving “14 injured, most of them Syrian workers” and Palestinians.
According to the same source, two firefighters were injured while trying to control the fire that broke out.
In a statement, the Israeli army said its air force had attacked “two Hezbollah weapons depots adjacent to Saida” in response to the “launch of a drone towards (…) northern Israel.”
The Israeli army said the drone was likely launched by the Islamist movement Hezbollah, which announces daily attacks on Israeli military positions.
The Israeli army is responding with air and artillery strikes, reportedly targeting the party's “infrastructure” and militants' movements near the border.
The Shiite party, which says it supports the Islamist movement Hamas, did not immediately claim responsibility for the drone attack following Israel's war against its ally in Gaza.
For its part, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry called on the international community to condemn the “persistent” Israeli attacks and to put pressure on Israel to “stop its provocative attempts (…) aimed at dragging Lebanon into a war that (Beirut ) tries to prevent.”
Cross-border violence escalated last week when Israel launched a series of deadly attacks against southern Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people, including 10 civilians, according to an AFP count.
Seven members of the same family were killed in an attack on the town of Nabatiyeh.
The attacks were carried out in retaliation for an unclaimed rocket attack from Lebanon on a military base in northern Israel that killed a female soldier.
The attacks on Ghaziyeh are among the few deep Israeli bombings in four months, with most hostilities with pro-Iran foe Hezbollah so far confined to border areas.
According to an AFP count, at least 269 people have been killed in southern Lebanon in more than four months, mostly fighters from Hezbollah and other allied groups, but also 40 civilians.
According to the army, ten soldiers and six civilians were killed on the Israeli side.