BEIRUT: The military wing of Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday said it fired a volley of rockets toward northern Israel from south Lebanon, amid escalating exchanges at the Lebanon-Israel border in recent days.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since war erupted between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group in October, while Palestinian groups in Lebanon have also occasionally claimed attacks.
Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement it targeted two Israeli military sites with two barrages of “Grad rockets.”
The attack from south Lebanon came in “response to Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of martyred leaders and their brothers in the southern suburbs” of Beirut, the statement added.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “approximately 10 launches which crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel were identified,” adding that sirens had sounded in north Israel’s Kiryat Shmona area.
Air defenses “successfully intercepted a number of the launches,” the statement said, adding that the army “struck the sources of the fire in Lebanon.”
Israeli police reported property damage in the Kiryat Shmona area but no wounded.
A strike in January, which a United States defense official said was carried out by Israel, killed Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh Al-Aruri and six militants in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold — the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the war.
This month, security sources told AFP a senior Hamas officer had survived an assassination attempt south of Beirut.
The escalating cross-border exchanges since October 8, the day after the Israel-Hamas war erupted, have stoked fears of all-out war on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
The exchanges have killed at least 284 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 44 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
At least 24 fighters from Palestinian groups including from 10 Hamas are also among the dead.
On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.
Hamas claims rocket fire on north Israel from south Lebanon
https://arab.news/cddqx
Hamas claims rocket fire on north Israel from south Lebanon
- Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement it targeted two Israeli military sites with two barrages of “Grad rockets“
- The Israeli military said in a statement that “approximately 10 launches which crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel were identified“
Palestinian succumbs to injuries inflicted by Israeli gunfire near Jerusalem
- Yousef Omar Aql, 33, was from Bidya, a town west of Salfit in the northern occupied West Bank
LONDON: A Palestinian man died on Tuesday from injuries sustained in Al-Ram town, north of East Jerusalem, after being shot by Israeli forces.
Yousef Omar Aql, 33, from the town of Bidya, which is west of Salfit in the northern occupied West Bank, died from a gunshot wound inflicted by Israeli forces. He was injured a week earlier in Al-Ram while trying to enter his workplace in Israel.
Aql was transferred to the Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah after being shot. He was admitted to intensive care but was declared dead on Tuesday after suffering critical injuries.
More than 1,000 Palestinians, including militants, have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the Gaza war in late 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. During the same period, 43 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank, according to official Israeli figures.
