Lebanese Hezbollah claimed to have fired dozens of rockets on Saturday January 6 towards a military base in northern Israel. The Lebanese Shiite movement presents this attack as its first response to the elimination of Hamas number two near Beirut.
“As part of the initial response to the assassination of the great leader Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri (…)the Islamic resistance targeted the military radar observation and air control base of Meron with 62 missiles of different types »Hezbollah said in a statement.
Saleh Al-Arouri and six other Hamas officials and executives were killed Tuesday evening in a strike attributed to Israel against an office of the Palestinian Islamist movement, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of pro-Iranian Hezbollah.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Lebanese government have blamed Israel, while a US defense official said Wednesday that it was indeed a “Israeli strike”. Israel did not take responsibility for this strike, the first near Beirut since the start of the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas on October 7.
“It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East, it is absolutely necessary to prevent Lebanon from being drawn into a regional conflict”said Saturday the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, during a press conference in Beirut with his Lebanese counterpart. “I also send this message to Israel: no one will win from a regional conflict”he added.
The head of French diplomacy, Catherine Colonna, said, for her part, that she had addressed “a very clear message” to his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, during a telephone interview. “The risk of regional conflagration has never been greater; Iran and its cronies must immediately stop their destabilizing actions. No one would gain from an escalation”she writes on X.
Around forty rocket attacks, according to Israel
The Israeli army reported on Saturday morning, of around forty rockets fired towards the Meron region from neighboring Lebanon, adding in a statement that his forces had struck in response a cell responsible for some of these shots. Rocket warning sirens sounded in towns in northern Israel, she said.
fighter planes have also bombed “two Hezbollah military complexes that contained significant resources for the terrorist organization”, added the Israeli general staff. The Lebanese National Information Agency (ANI, official) reported Israeli bombings and a series of airstrikes on several towns and villages in southern Lebanon. One of the airstrikes hit a house in the Saida district, located about 25 kilometers from the Israeli-Lebanese border, it said.
A Syrian refugee was injured by a strike in a village in the Marjeyoun district, ANI reported, and Hezbollah announced without further details that five fighters were killed on Saturday.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched daily attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon, in support of Hamas, its ally. And Israel responds by bombing targets in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah particularly targets Israeli military positions near the border.
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The violence left 180 dead in Lebanon, including 134 Hezbollah fighters and more than twenty civilians, according to a count by Agence France-Presse. In northern Israel, nine soldiers and five civilians were killed, according to authorities.
On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday’s strike on his stronghold “is serious and would not go unanswered”. “The response is inevitable” and the movement goes ” answer “ on ” the battlefield “he warned.