Jakarta –
Military Israel said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in Lebanon east, where Iran-backed groups have a strong presence, on Sunday. The attack was in retaliation for the downing of one of Israel’s drones.
Reported by AFP, Sunday (7/4/2024), a source close to Hezbollah told AFP correspondents in the Baalbek region, eastern Lebanon, that the attack targeted Janta and Sifri in the Bekaa Valley.
The Israeli military said via Telegram that “fighter jets struck a military compound and three other infrastructure sites belonging to Hezbollah’s air defense network” in the region.
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It said the attack was “revenge for an attack” in which an army “drone” was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on Saturday.
Sifri is on the plains of the Bekaa Valley, while nearby Janta is an arid mountainous region close to the border with Syria.
A source from Lebanon’s civil defense said there were no casualties.
It is known that Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged cross-border fire almost every day since the Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Hamas ally Hezbollah generally targets Israeli positions near the border, while Israel has carried out attacks deeper into Lebanese territory, also targeting commanders of the Shiite Muslim militant group.
Hezbollah announced it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 900 drone over Lebanese territory on Saturday evening, after initially identifying it as a Hermes 450.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said the target of the Israeli attack in Sifri was a “hangar”.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Friday that his movement had not yet used “major” weapons, and reiterated that Hezbollah would stop its attacks only when the war in Gaza ends.
Cross-border fighting has killed at least 359 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, where the military said 10 soldiers and eight civilians were killed.
Also read ‘When the US threatened Israel if it didn’t protect civilians in Gaza’:
(yld/gbr)
2024-04-07 09:03:07
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