The Israeli army is carrying out checks after the death of a journalist in Lebanon on Friday evening, a spokesman said on Saturday, adding that it was “very regrettable” without explicitly recognizing Israel’s responsibility for tensions along the border between the two countries intensifying .
“We deeply regret his death. “We are conducting checks,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, said during a news conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.
The journalist, who worked for the Portal agency, was killed on Friday while reporting on the situation in southern Lebanon near the village of Alma el-Chaab, along with several other journalists belonging to the same group, including two from the AFP injured.
A Lebanese security source told AFP that the first Israeli bombings followed an attempt by Palestinians to enter Israel from the Lebanese side of the border.
“We will respond to every shot from Lebanon with a shot,” emphasized Brigadier General Daniel Hagari on Saturday.
“The Israeli army has a very large force in the north and anyone who reaches the border [avec Israël, NDLR] Entering Israeli territory will die,” he added, stressing that “Lebanon would pay the price.”
Tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border are gradually increasing.
According to an Israeli army spokesman, several “terrorists” were killed on Saturday morning when the army thwarted an attempt to enter Israel from Lebanon.
“Soldiers of the Israeli army identified a terrorist squad a few hours ago that attempted to enter Israeli territory from Lebanon.
A drone targeted this command and killed several terrorists,” the spokesman said in a statement.
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““Deeply concerned”
“We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer Issam Abdallah was killed,” Portal said in a statement on Friday. He was part of a Portal team in southern Lebanon.
“Israel deliberately killed my son. They were all wearing journalist’s clothes and the word “press” was visible. Israel cannot deny this crime,” his mother Fatima Kanso told Portal.
AFP photographer Christina Assi was in the area with fellow AFP video journalist Dylan Collins.
Both were taken to the American University of Beirut Hospital for treatment.
Two other Portal journalists, “Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, were also injured and require medical treatment,” Portal said in its statement.
According to one of the two injured AFP journalists, the group of journalists affected by this tragedy was near the village of Aalma ech-Chaab, close to the Israeli border, when they were caught up in cross-border bombings.
Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera said two of its journalists, Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhya, were injured and said “their vehicle was hit by an Israeli bomb attack.”
“We are deeply concerned that a group of clearly identified journalists have been killed and injured in the course of their work,” said Phil Chetwynd, AFP news director.
“We extend our deepest condolences to our friends at Portal on the loss of Issam and our thoughts are with all of our injured colleagues in the hospital.”
For his part, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned in a statement the Israeli enemy’s “direct attacks on journalists as part of its ongoing aggression against Lebanese territory.”
In New York, the UN Secretary-General stressed that these events showed “the great risk of spillover” of the war between Hamas and Israel to the Lebanese neighbor and expressed his condolences, while UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called for an investigation, to “determine exactly what happened.”
The border region has been the scene of regular clashes for almost a week, but operations have so far been limited, as have Israeli bombings on the outskirts of border villages in southern Lebanon.
The powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah has so far contented itself with a measured intervention in the war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by an attack of unprecedented scale by the Palestinian Islamist movement, an ally of Hezbollah, on October 7 that left thousands dead on both camps.