BEIRUT: Six Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli strike on Tuesday, a Lebanese security source said, with the group attacking northern Israel and claiming low-flying Israeli warplanes breached the sound barrier over Beirut.
Hezbollah, backed by its ally Hamas, has traded fire almost daily with Israel since the October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group triggered the war in Gaza.
Tensions have risen since Iran and its allies retaliated against Israel for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and after an Israeli strike killed Fuad Shouk, a top Hezbollah military commander, in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Lebanon's Ministry of Health said that “an Israeli enemy attack on a house in the town of Mefadoun, near the southern city of Nabatieh, killed five people, while another Israeli attack in the Adayseeh area killed one person.
Those killed in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters”, a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because the matter was sensitive.
Hezbollah announced five fighters were killed, without specifying where they died.
The Israeli military said its air force struck a “Hezbollah military structure” in the Nabatieh area that was being used “to carry out terrorist attacks” against Israel.
Hezbollah claimed several attacks on Israeli positions on Tuesday, including an “explosive-laden drone” targeting a barracks north of the coastal city of Acre.
“Several hostile UAVs (drones) were identified crossing from Lebanon,” the Israeli military said, adding that “several civilians were injured in the southern part of Nahariya,” near Acre.
It later said that initial investigations indicated that one of its interceptor missiles “missed its target and fell to the ground, injuring several civilians” and that “the incident is under review.”
Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said paramedics were treating “a 30-year-old man in critical condition and a 30-year-old woman with light to moderate shrapnel injuries.”
Hezbollah said the drone strike was in response to an airstrike on the southern village of Ebba on Monday that the Israeli military said targeted a commander in the group's elite Radwan Force.
A low-flying Israeli military plane broke the sound barrier in Beirut on Tuesday ahead of a speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanon's National News Agency, a security source and AFP reporters said.
Nasrallah was giving a televised address a week after the killing of Shukra, whom Israel described as the group's “most senior military commander” and Nasrallah's “right-hand man”.
Cross-border violence has killed at least 556 people in Lebanon since October, mostly militants but also at least 116 civilians, according to AFP figures.
On the Israeli side, in the occupied Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Diplomatic efforts to prevent a territorial spat and full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last went to war in the summer of 2006, have gone into overdrive.
