Hezbollah launches rockets in reply to Israeli airstrikes
No casualties reported as tensions escalate
• Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets near Israeli positions close to the Lebanese border Friday, in retaliation for Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon a day earlier.
It was the first time the militant group has directly claimed responsibility for an attack on Israel since 2019 and the first time Israel has acknowledged carrying out an airstrike in Lebanon since 2014, marking a significant escalation in tensions following a week of tit-for-tat exchanges.
No casualties were reported in the exchange, which came amid escalating tensions between the West and Iran following the deadly drone attack on the MV Mercer Street, an Israeli-linked tanker, last week. The G7 group of industrialized nations and the EU Friday condemned the July 29 attack, which killed a British security guard and the ship’s Romanian captain, as “a clear violation of international law.”
“All available evidence clearly points to Iran. There is no justification,” they said in a joint statement. “Iran’s behaviour, alongside its support to proxy forces and nonstate armed actors, threatens international security.”
Britain was expected to call for concerted action against Iran over the incident at a session of the UN security council in New York.
The latest round of rocket fire across the Israeli border came “in response to the Israeli air raids” that hit south Lebanon on Thursday, Hezbollah said in a statement.
“The Islamic Resistance shelled open territory near positions of Israeli occupation forces in the Shebaa Farms with dozens of rockets,” it said. No casualties were reported.
The Shia group also acknowledged that the fighters who fired rockets were afterwards intercepted by locals as they passed through a predominantly Druze area.
A video circulated on social media and broadcast by Lebanese TV stations showed a crowd of men gathered around a blue, flatback truck loaded with rocket launchers in Chouya. Reports said the men objected to the area being used for launches because of the danger of Israeli retaliation.
Israel said most of the rockets were intercepted by the defence system known as the Iron Dome, and that it would be retaliating.