Beirut:
The Iran-backed Hezbollah group intensified its attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon on Thursday, with Israeli bombardments killing seven of its fighters, including members of an elite unit.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, the border between Lebanon and Israel has witnessed escalating gun battles, mainly involving Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, along with Palestinian groups.
The clashes have raised fears of a wider fire.
Hezbollah said it has carried out more than 20 attacks on Israeli military positions, causing casualties.
In one of the attacks, it said it fired 48 Katyusha rockets at a military base in Ein Zeitim, near the city of Safed in northern Israel, about 10 kilometers from the border.
That attack, which used the Burkan heavy-lift missile, was the largest salvo of rockets fired by the Iran-backed group since violence erupted last month.
The Israeli military said its helicopters and fighter jets, in response to the fire on Israel, had struck Hezbollah “terrorist infrastructure” as well as rocket launch sites.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the Israeli army had shelled several locations in southern Lebanon in response.
Hezbollah says it has been supporting Hamas since the Palestinian Islamist movement’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which Israeli officials say killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostage.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and its retaliatory air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed nearly 15,000 people, including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian territory’s Hamas government.
– ‘Great victory’ –
Thursday’s gunfight took place as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In a statement, Hezbollah said Amir-Abdollahian and Nasrallah “discussed the latest developments in Palestine, Lebanon and the region, and… the efforts made to end Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip.”
Amir-Abdollahian, who warned on Wednesday that the war could spiral out of control, left Beirut after their meeting for Doha, Iran’s Nour news agency reported.
Iran, which backs Hamas and Hezbollah, celebrated the October 7 attacks but denied any direct involvement.
The violence between Israel and Hezbollah has claimed at least 109 lives in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 14 civilians, including three journalists, according to an AFP count.
According to authorities, six Israeli soldiers and three civilians were killed on the Israeli side.
Hezbollah held funerals Thursday for militants killed in southern Lebanon, including the son of a lawmaker.
Abbas Raad, the son of Hezbollah lawmaker Mohamed Raad, was killed along with four others in an Israeli attack on a house in the village of Beit Yahoun on Wednesday evening, a source close to the family told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Two leaders of Hezbollah’s Al-Radwan force were among the five killed, according to a source close to the group.
Two other fighters were subsequently declared dead by Hezbollah.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day ceasefire on Wednesday and a hostage and prisoner swap, now expected to begin on Friday.
In Tehran, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Israel had failed to achieve its war aims and that “the Palestinian people and the resistance have won a great victory,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)