Zionists hit east Lebanon, kill 2

Zionists struck Hezbollah targets near the city of Baalbek on Monday, killing two group members, security sources said, the first such attack on Lebanon’s east since hostilities began after the Gaza war erupted. The Zionist army said the strikes targeted Hezbollah air defense systems in retaliation for the Iran-backed group downing one of its drones in south Lebanon earlier on Monday. “Two Hezbollah members were killed in the Zionist strikes near Baalbek,” a security official in Lebanon told AFP. Another security source confirmed the toll.

Earlier Monday, one of the sources had said Zionist strikes hit a building used by Hezbollah in a Baalbek suburb, and a warehouse near Baalbek belonging to a Muslim group. Both sources requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press. The army said it struck Hezbollah “aerial defense” sites in the Bekaa valley in response “to the launch of a surface-to-air missile” which downed the drone.

During a funeral procession for a Hezbollah fighter, one of the group’s lawmakers, Hassan Fadlallah, lambasted the strikes on Baalbek, a Hezbollah bastion near the border with Syria. “This Zionist encroachment will not push us to retreat, it will rather increase our determination,” Fadlallah said in a televised address. Zionist “aggression on Baalbek or any other region will not remain unanswered,

and the resistance will respond in the appropriate manner,” he added. In January, a strike widely attributed to Zionists killed Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh Al-Aruri and six militants in Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold - the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the war.

On Sunday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said there would be no let up in action against Hezbollah, even if a ceasefire and hostage deal were secured in Gaza. Hezbollah has said it will stop launching attacks on Zionist entity if the military stops its Gaza offensive. At least 280 people have been killed on the Lebanese side since fighting erupted, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 44 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Zionist side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Zionist army.