BERIUT: Six Hezbollah fighters were killed on Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike that Hezbollah claimed was aimed at northern Israel, and Israeli fighter jets flew low over Beirut, breaking the sound barrier, Lebanese security sources said.
Since the Palestinian militant group Hezbollah launched an attack on Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has traded attacks with Israel almost daily in support of its ally Hamas.
Tensions rose last week as Iran and its allies vowed to retaliate for the killing of Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and after an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut's southern suburbs.
Lebanon's Health Ministry said five people were killed when “enemy Israeli forces attacked a house in the village of Maifadun near the southern city of Nabatiya”, while another Israeli airstrike killed one person in the Adaiyse area.
According to AFP, all those killed in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because the matter is sensitive.
Hezbollah said five of its fighters were killed, but did not say where they were killed.
The Israeli military said its air force “strikeed Hezbollah military facilities” in the Nabatiya area that were being used “to incite terrorist attacks” against Israel.
Hezbollah claimed several attacks on Israeli positions on Tuesday, including one using an “explosive-tipped drone” that targeted a barracks north of the coastal city of Acre.
“Several hostile drones have been identified that crossed over from Lebanon,” the Israeli military said, adding that “several civilians were injured south of Nahariya, near Acre.”
An initial investigation later found that one of the intercepted missiles “missed its target and struck the ground, injuring several civilians,” it said, adding that “the incident remains under review.”
Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said paramedics were treating “a 30-year-old man in serious condition and a 30-year-old woman in mild to moderate condition with shrapnel injuries.”
Hezbollah said the drone strike was a response to an airstrike on Monday in the southern town of Eba, which the Israeli military said targeted the commander of Hezbollah's elite Radwan unit.
An Israeli military aircraft flew low over Beirut on Tuesday, breaking the sound barrier ahead of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese state news agency, security sources and AFP reporters said.
Nasrallah made his televised speech a week after Israel killed Shukr, whom it described as the group's “most senior military commander” and Nasrallah's “right-hand man.”
Some 556 people have been killed in cross-border violence in Lebanon since October, mostly combatants but at least 116 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
According to Israeli military figures, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians were killed on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights.
Diplomatic efforts are heating up to prevent a regional conflagration and a full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought a war in the summer of 2006.
