An Israeli strike on Saturday targeted a vehicle in southern Lebanon, about 45 km north of the shared border, marking the first attack deep into Lebanese territory since hostilities began in October, state media said.
The official ANI agency, which reported no casualties, said that “an enemy drone attacked a van parked in an orchard in the Zahrani region” on the Lebanese coast.
Daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel have generally been confined to the border area between the two countries since the start of the war, which was sparked by Palestinian Hamas’s bloody attacks on Israeli soil on October 7.
This is the first time that an Israeli attack has targeted a target far from the border.
The journalists were unable to approach the destination, a banana plantation, because the Lebanese army banned access.
This raid comes hours before the powerful Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s expected speech, scheduled for 1:00 p.m. GMT.
According to ANI and an AFP journalist in northern Israel, bombings continued on both sides of the border on Saturday morning.
On Friday, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel was “rarely operating on a large scale in the north” in response to three drone “infiltrations.”
Hezbollah, for its part, claimed responsibility for several attacks on Israel’s northern border, including three drone strikes, one of which targeted an Israeli army barracks.
It announced the deaths of seven of its fighters on Friday, bringing to 68 the total number of militants killed since it began bombing Israeli positions in solidarity with Hamas, its ally.
According to an AFP count, at least 90 people were killed in cross-border clashes on the Lebanese side. On the Israeli side, six soldiers and two civilians were killed.