BERIUT: A Lebanese security source said six Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, with the group claiming strikes 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 Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked war in Gaza.
Tensions have soared in the past week as Iran and its allies vowed revenge for the assassination, blamed on Israel, of Hamas 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 town of Nabatiyeh, killed five people, while another Israeli attack in the Adaysseh area killed one person.
The dead in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
Hezbollah announced that five fighters had been killed, without specifying where they died.
The Israeli military said its air force “struck a Hezbollah military structure” in the Nabatiyeh area that was used “to promote terrorist 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 city of Acre.
The Israeli military said “a number of hostile UAVs (drones) were identified crossing from Lebanon,” adding that “several civilians were injured south of Nahariya,” near Acre.
It later said that an initial investigation indicated that one of its interceptor missiles “missed its target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians,” adding that “the incident is under review.”
Israel Emergency Services Magen David Adom said paramedics were treating “a 30-year-old man in serious condition and a 30-year-old woman in light to moderate condition with shrapnel injuries.”
Hezbollah said the drone attack was in response to an airstrike 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 on Tuesday ahead of a speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanon's national news agency said, a security source and AFP journalists said.
Nasrallah gave a televised speech a week after the killing of Shukr, whom Israel has described as the group's “supreme military commander” and Nasrallah's “right-hand man”.
The cross-border violence since October has killed around 556 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also at least 116 civilians, according to a report by AFP.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Diplomatic efforts have gone into overdrive to avert a regional conflagration and full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last went to war in the summer of 2006.
