BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israeli forces traded cross-border attacks, both sides said early Sunday, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported three rescuers killed in an Israeli attack.
The Iran-backed Lebanese movement has exchanged near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s 7 October attack on Israel triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during 11 months of the cross-border violence.
Hezbollah said it had bombarded the northern Israeli town of “Kiryat Shmona with a volley of Falaq rockets” early Sunday “in response to the enemy attacks... and particularly the attack” that killed the emergency workers in the Lebanese village of Froun.
On Saturday, Lebanon’s health ministry said three emergency responders were killed and two others wounded, one of them critically, in an Israeli strike on Froun.
The ministry said the attack had targeted “a Lebanese civil defense team that was putting out fires sparked by the recent Israeli strikes,” while the Israeli military said it had “eliminated terrorists” from the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement in Froun.
Lebanon’s civil defense agency said three of its employees were killed in “an Israeli strike that targeted a firefighting vehicle after they had finished a firefighting mission.”
Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack, saying in a statement that “this new aggression against Lebanon is a blatant violation of international laws... and human values.”
Separately on Sunday, Hezbollah said that its fighters had also fired rockets at the Israeli community of Shamir, near Kiryat Shmona.
Hezbollah usually says it targets military positions in northern Israel, while Israel has said it targets Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters in south and east Lebanon.
The Israeli military on Sunday morning announced it had carried out a series of air strikes on “Hezbollah military structures” and intercepted projectiles launched from Lebanon during the night.