Lebanon's Hezbollah claimed to have fired dozens of rockets at a military base in northern Israel on Saturday, presenting the attack as its first response to eliminating number two Hamas in its stronghold near Beirut.
Saleh al-Arouri and six other Hamas officials and leaders were killed Tuesday evening in an attack attributed to Israel on an office of the Palestinian Islamist movement in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel for it, and a U.S. defense official said Wednesday that it was actually an “Israeli attack.”
Israel did not claim responsibility for the attack, the first near Beirut since the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas began on October 7.
“As part of the initial response to the assassination of the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri […]Islamic resistance [Hezbollah] “targeted the Meron military radar observation and air control base with 62 rockets of different types,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
The Israeli army reported about forty rocket shots fired from neighboring Lebanon into the Meron region on Saturday morning, adding in a statement that its forces had responded by attacking a cell responsible for some of those shots.
Missile warning sirens sounded in cities in northern Israel, she said.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched daily attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its ally Hamas. And Israel responds by bombing targets in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah particularly attacks Israeli military positions near the border.
According to an AFP count, the violence in Lebanon claimed 175 lives, including 129 Hezbollah fighters but also more than 20 civilians.
According to authorities, nine soldiers and five civilians were killed in northern Israel.
On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday's attack on his stronghold was “serious and will not go unanswered.” “The reaction is inevitable” and the movement will “react” on “the battlefield,” he warned.