Lebanon’s Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel yesterday after an Israeli air strike that according to a Lebanese security source killed two civilians in the country’s south.
The Israeli military, whose forces have been trading regular cross-border fire with Hezbollah since early October, said its raid had targeted two operatives from the group.
The movement said it had retaliated by launching dozens of rockets at the border town of Kiryat Shmona, in Israel’s north.
Hezbollah had already launched multiple attacks against Israeli military positions along the border yesterday.
The security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said that “two civilians were filling up water from a roadside spring” in south Lebanon’s Deir Mimas area when they were killed in an “Israeli air strike”.
A source close to Hezbollah, also requesting anonymity, said one of the men was a member of the group and the father of a fighter who had been killed, while the second man was a member of Hezbollah ally the Amal movement.
The pair were “civilians, not fighters”, the source added.
The Israeli army said in a statement that “soldiers identified two Hezbollah fighters preparing to launch projectiles toward Israeli territory in the area of Deir Mimas in southern Lebanon”.
Two Lebanese men inspect a damaged vehicle following an Israeli strike along the road between Khardali and Marjeyoun, near the village of Deir Mimas, close to the southern Lebanese border, yesterday.
