BEIRUT: Exchange of attacks between Israeli and Hezbollah forces have intensified ending the brief lull along the border after Tel Aviv killed the Lebanese group’s military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut.
The escalation of tensions in the region follows Friday’s burial of Ismael Haniyeh in Doha after Israel murdered the Hamas leader in Tehran, Iran’s capital, earlier this week.
Hezbollah announced that its forces launched a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli warplane in Lebanese airspace overnight, forcing the aircraft to turn back.
The group also reported two artillery attacks and two rocket strikes on military positions in northern Israel.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military claimed to have intercepted an aerial target coming from Lebanon into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire also hit several villages in southern Lebanon on Friday, according to Lebanese state media.
This follows an Israeli strike that killed at least five Syrian migrant workers in southern Lebanon, as reported by medics.
Earlier on Tuesday Israel’s military said it had killed Hezbollah’s most senior commander in an airstrike on Beirut, in retaliation for a cross-border rocket attack that killed 12 youngsters three days ago which it blamed on the Lebanese armed group.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in an address later on Thursday, declared that Hezbollah would resume its usual military operations against Israel.
He indicated that a retaliation would follow the Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday that killed military commander Fuad Shukr, along with an Iranian military adviser and five civilians.
Nasrallah emphasised that Hezbollah’s response would be “real and studied,” rather than symbolic, and noted that several countries had urged the group against retaliation.
He accused Israel of crossing “red lines” and stated that a regional escalation would depend on Israel’s reaction to the forthcoming reprisal.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel was prepared for any retaliatory attack by Iran and its allies.
“Israel is very prepared for any scenario – both defensively and offensively,” he stated. “We will exact a very heavy price for any act of aggression against us from any arena.”
The cross border exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel has persisted in parallel with Tel Aviv’s onalsught on Gaza, launched in the aftermath of the Hamas attack in October, 2023.
However, the recent strikes have threatened to escalate into a full-scale regional war.
This was the second assault on the Lebanese capital this year, with a previous Israeli air raid in January killing Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri in Dahiyeh.
