Israel launched an airstrike on Lebanon’s Majdal Salam town on Saturday, injuring two civilians and a medic from the International Union of Muslim Scouts who was doing humanitarian operations, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Israeli aircraft carried out an airstrike on multiple residences in Tayr Harfa, in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon, Anadolu Agency said.
In response, Hezbollah claimed that its forces had attacked “a group of enemy soldiers in Tel Shaar with rocket-propelled weapons, hitting them directly.”
The Lebanese group claimed that it had bombarded the Israeli location of Al-Malkiyya “with artillery shells, hitting it directly,” and had attacked “surveillance equipment at the Ramya military site in northern Israel with a kamikaze drone, leading to its destruction.”
Fears of a full-fledged conflict between Israel and Hezbollah have increased following months of cross-border firing from both sides.
Since October 7, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, notably Hezbollah, have exchanged daily bombardments with the Israeli army on the other side of the “Blue Line,” leaving hundreds dead and wounded, most of them on the Lebanese side.
On Saturday, Israel killed Samer al-Hajj, a Hamas official, in southern Lebanon. In January, an Israeli strike near Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, Hamas’s deputy chief. Last week, another strike in the same area killed Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military commander.
In mid-June, the Israeli army used medieval-era arms to set fires in southern Lebanon using a trebuchet, an advanced catapult employed in the Middle Ages, to throw incendiary explosives, ostensibly to flush out Hezbollah operatives hiding near the border.
A few days before that, the IDF was accused of bombing 17 Lebanese regions using “white phosphorus,” a substance that is banned under international law.