Zionist strike on South Lebanon kills three people

BEIRUT: A Zionist strike in south Lebanon killed a Hezbollah fighter, the group said Wednesday, as state media reported two of his relatives were also killed and the Iran-backed movement launched rockets in retaliation. The border between Lebanon and the Zionist entity has seen escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between the Zionist army and Hamas ally Hezbollah since Oct 7.

“Enemy warplanes raided, before midnight (2200 GMT), a house ... in the center of the town of Bint Jbeil,” around two kilometers (a little over a mile) from the border, killing a man, his brother and his wife, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said.

The NNA identified the dead as Ali Bazzi, his brother Ibrahim and his wife Shourouk Hammoud, and said another family member was wounded. Hezbollah later announced that Ali Bazzi was one of its fighters. A relative told AFP that Ibrahim Bazzi was an Australian citizen who had flown in for a visit about a week earlier. At the funeral procession in Bint Jbeil on Wednesday, an AFP photographer saw three coffins draped in Hezbollah flags. Hassan Fadlallah, a lawmaker from the Iran-backed group, told the ceremony that “no crime against civilians will pass without the enemy paying the price”.

Hezbollah later Wednesday said it launched a barrage of 30 Katyusha rockets towards Kiryat Shmona in the northern Zionist entity “in response to the enemy’s repeated crimes and its targeting of civilian houses in Bint Jbeil”. Since the cross-border hostilities began, more than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah combatants but also more than 20 civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally. On the Zionist side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed, according to figures from the military.

Exchanges of fire have been largely confined to the border area, although the Zionist entity has conducted limited strikes deeper into Lebanese territory. Hezbollah said Wednesday it carried out a series of other attacks on Zionist troops and positions, including one on the contested Shebaa Farms involving “suicide drones”, missiles and artillery.