The airstrikes came after Israel accused Hezbollah of killing 12 civilians in the Golan Heights.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed that it carried out airstrikes against multiple targets in southern Lebanon. This came after Israeli officials vowed to retaliate after 12 people were killed when a rocket hit a football field in the occupied Golan Heights.
The attacks were reported by multiple news outlets in the early hours of Sunday. According to Al Jazeera, explosions were heard in the coastal city of Tyre and several villages along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Later, the IDF said in the statement that its air force “struck a series of Hezbollah terror targets” overnight, “both deep inside Lebanese territory and in southern Lebanon, including weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure in the areas of Chabriha, Borj El Chmali, and Beqaa, Kfarkela, Rab El Thalathine, Khiam, and Tayr Harfa.”
Tensions flared up on Saturday when a rocket struck the Druze village of Majdal Shams. The Israeli government blamed Hezbollah for the attack, the victims of which were mostly children. The Lebanon-based group rejected the accusations.
Israeli politicians made strongly worded statements throughout the day, condemning Hezbollah, whose forces have been firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli military and civilian targets in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
“There is no doubt that Hezbollah crossed all red lines,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, warning that the country is on the brink of “an all-out war” with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the commander of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, Aroldo Lazaro, released a joint statement on Sunday, calling for “the parties to exercise maximum restraint and to put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire.”
The escalation “could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” they said.
This article was originally published by Daily Telegraph New Zealand.
