Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel Wednesday killing a civilian, after Israel carried out a deadly strike in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 triggering war in Gaza.
Israeli rescue teams searching a building that had been hit in the border town of Kiryat Shmona “found a 25 year old who was unconscious, with no pulse and not breathing”, and pronounced him dead at the scene, the Magen David Adom emergency service said.
Hezbollah said they fired “dozens of rockets” at Kiryat Shmona in retaliation for what it called “the massacre committed by the Zionist enemy (Israel)” in the south Lebanon village of Habariyeh.
The emergency response arm of Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese militant group closely linked to Hamas, said “a number” of people were killed in the overnight Israeli strike in Habariyeh.
Speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, a Jamaa Islamiya official said the seven dead were “rescuers” who were killed when an emergency centre in the village was hit.
Another Jamaa Islamiya official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said a dozen first responders were in the centre at the time of the strike, adding that bodies were being pulled from the rubble.
The Israeli military said the target of the strike was “a military compound” and those killed were Jamaa Islamiya “terrorists”.
It said a “significant terrorist operative” and other members of the group were planning attacks against Israel at the time of the strike.
Cross-border fire since October has killed at least 338 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 57 civilians, according to an AFP count.
At least 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed in Israel, according to the Israeli military.
The hostilities have prompted an exodus of civilians from vulnerable areas on both sides of the border and raised fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war in 2006.
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