HEZBOLLAH HAS SAID it launched rockets at an Israeli intelligence base near Tel Aviv in the early hours of this morning.
At 2.30am (12.30am Irish time), militants “fired a salvo of rockets at the Glilot base of the 8200 military intelligence unit in the suburbs of Tel Aviv” the group said in a statement.
Hezbollah and Israel exchanged cross-border fire for nearly a year after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel last year sparked the current conflict in Gaza, before Israel ramped up the conflict on 23 September.
The militant group frequently claims to have fired rockets at Israeli bases or urban areas in Israeli territory, and has several times claimed the targeting of Glilot.
It also said it had fired rocket salvos this morning at areas in the north of Israel, in particular at the city of Safed, another repeat target.
The Israeli military said that sirens were activated following the arrival of “suspicious aerial targets” from Lebanon and the targets remained under surveillance in an ongoing incident.
Last night, Lebanon’s health ministry said 52 people were killed and 72 were wounded in Israeli strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel region, north of Beirut, where the Israeli military did not issue advanced evacuation notices.
Twelve of the victims were killed in the village of Amhaz, it said, while nine were killed in Yunin and eight in Bednayel.
This morning, police in Israel said that a missile strike on the country’s Sharon area has wounded 19 people.
It comes after the army reported three projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central Israel.
All 19, four of whom were “in moderate condition”, were taken to hospitals for treatment, the Israeli police added.
Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency medical service earlier said that several people had been wounded in a strike on the central city of Tira, including “a male around 20 with shrapnel injuries”.
Videos posted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on social media showed fire and smoke spilling from a building into the street and emergency responders swarming the site.
“This is the result of a direct hit of a Hezbollah rocket on a building in the Israeli Arab town of Tira, injuring 19 civilians,” the ministry said in the post.
“We cannot and will not rest until Hezbollah is dismantled,” it added.
The Israeli army said on Telegram that it had intercepted some of the three projectiles fired from Lebanon.
Tira, a predominantly Arab town, is located around 25 kilometres northeast of Tel Aviv, near the border with the occupied West Bank.
The war raging in the Gaza Strip has spread to Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out air strikes against Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian group Hamas.
According to Israeli figures, at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side since cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah erupted following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.
The attack resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 43,259 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry, which are considered reliable by the United Nations.
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