Hezbollah fires missiles and artillery at Israel after death of military commander

Beirut:

Hezbollah forces on Friday resumed rocket and artillery attacks against Israel, ending the calm along the border following Israel’s assassination of the Lebanese group’s military commander in Beirut.

Hezbollah said it fired a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli warplane flying in Lebanese airspace overnight and forced it to turn back. His forces also carried out two artillery strikes and two rocket attacks against military positions in northern Israel, he said.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had successfully intercepted an aerial target coming from Lebanon to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire hit several villages in southern Lebanon on Friday, according to Lebanese state media, a day after an Israeli strike killed at least five Syrian migrant workers in southern Lebanon, according to doctors.

The Israeli military also said it had hit two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech on Thursday that he ordered calm along the border following the Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday that killed military commander Fuad Shukr out of respect for the victims and to consider who should be the next steps.

The attack on the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, also killed an Iranian military adviser and five civilians.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah would retaliate, but would need to study what its response would be and, if not, it would resume its usual military operations against Israel.

Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire for almost 10 months in parallel with the Gaza war, with exchanges limited mainly to the border area.

But attacks since last week have threatened to turn the conflict into a full-scale regional war.

Israel and the United States have accused Hezbollah of killing 12 young men in a July 27 rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an allegation Hezbollah has denied.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, told Reuters on Friday it did not investigate the incident because the Israeli-occupied Golan is outside its mandated area of ​​operations.

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