The Lebanese group said it attacked the Meron air base following the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut.
The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it attacked a key Israeli military post with a barrage of 62 rockets in a “preliminary response” to the killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut this week.
This came as the European Union's foreign policy chief met the Lebanese prime minister in Beirut on Saturday and warned that Lebanon was being drawn into a regional conflict arising from Israel's war on Gaza.
“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri… of the Islamic resistance.” [Hezbollah] “We attacked the Meron air base with 62 different types of missiles,” the Iran-aligned group said in a statement on Saturday about the attacks in northern Israel.
The Israeli military said earlier that about 40 rockets had been fired at the Meron air surveillance base and responded by attacking a “terror cell” involved in the launches. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Later on Saturday, the Lebanese Jama'a Islamiya group said in a statement that it had fired two volleys of rockets at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday that all of Lebanon would be exposed if it did not respond to the killing of Hamas deputy chief al-Arouri, warning that it would “certainly not be without reaction and punishment.”
Al-Arouri was assassinated on Tuesday in a suspected Israeli attack on a Hezbollah stronghold. Nasrallah has warned Israel against escalating the conflict, saying there would be “no upper limits” and “no rules” to his group's fighting if Israel decided to start a war against Lebanon.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday it was “essential” to prevent a regional escalation in the Middle East.
“It is absolutely necessary to prevent Lebanon from being drawn into a regional conflict,” he said, also warning Israel that “no one will win from a regional conflict.”
“We are seeing a worrying intensification of exchanges of fire across the Blue Line,” he added, referring to the current demarcation line between the two countries, a border mapped by the United Nations that marks the line up to which the Israelis extend Forces withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said any large-scale bombing in southern Lebanon would lead to a “full-scale explosion” in the region.
Continue fighting
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Beirut, said Saturday's attack by Hezbollah was an expected result following Nasrallah's statements on al-Arouri's killing.
“The Israelis would have expected an answer. “They would have been on high alert,” he reported.
Khan said Hezbollah needed to make a “very political calculation” given ongoing cross-border fighting in Lebanon.
“They don’t want Lebanon to suffer from an outright war. But it talks tough. It means that if Israel wants to escalate, it will respond accordingly,” he added.
Since the war in Gaza began in October last year, Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily. The violence was largely limited to the border area.
“Israel is putting enormous pressure on Hezbollah positions in the south with air strikes and drones,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported.
“This is interesting because the more pressure they put on Hezbollah, the more there could be a misfire or a miscalculated attack on either side, which could lead to an escalation of the situation.”
With no end in sight to Israel's war on Gaza and regional tensions rising, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on his fourth visit to the Middle East in three months.