BEIRUT: A Lebanese security source said six Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, with the group claiming attacks on northern Israel and low-flying Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier over Beirut.
Hezbollah has traded near-daily fire with Israel in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.
Tensions have soared in the past week as Iran and its allies vowed revenge for the killing, blamed on Israel, of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and after an Israeli strike killed Hezbollah’s top military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Lebanon’s health ministry said an “Israeli enemy raid on a house in the town of Mayfadun”, near the southern city of Nabatiyeh, killed five people, while another Israeli strike in the Adaysseh area killed one person.
The dead in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters”, a security source told AFP.
The Israeli military said its air force “struck a Hezbollah military structure” in the Nabatiyeh area that was being used “to advance terror attacks” against Israel.
Hezbollah claimed several attacks on Israeli positions on Tuesday, including one with “explosive-laden drones” targeting a barracks north of the coastal town of Acre.
Sound barrier, Israelis injured
The Israeli military said “a number of hostile UAVs (drones) were identified crossing from Lebanon”, adding that “several civilians were injured to the south of Nahariya”, near Acre.
It later said an initial inquiry indicated that one of its interceptor missiles “missed the target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians”, adding that “the incident is under review.”
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said paramedics were treating “a 30-year-old male in serious condition and a 30-year-old woman in mild to moderate condition with shrapnel injuries”.
Hezbollah said the drone attack was in response to an air strike on the southern village of Ebba on Monday that, according to the Israeli military, targeted a commander in the group’s elite Radwan Force.
Low-flying Israeli military aircraft broke the sound barrier over Beirut Tuesday ahead of a speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanon’s National News Agency, a security source and AFP journalists said.
Nasrallah was making a televised address a week after the killing of Shukr, whom Israel has described as the group’s “most senior military commander” and Nasrallah’s “right-hand man”.
Hezbollah’s chief said his group and Iran were “obliged to respond” to Israel “whatever the consequences”.
Iran “finds itself obliged to respond, and the enemy is waiting in a great state of dread”, Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address, adding that Hezbollah will respond “alone or in the context of a unified response from all the axis” of Iran-backed groups in the region, “whatever the consequences”.
