1 killed in Zionist strike on east Lebanon: Source

BEKAA VALLEY: A Zionist strike on a car near the Syrian border killed a man Sunday, a security source said, after overnight fire wounded four people in Lebanon’s east, according to an AFP correspondent.

The Zionist entity and Hezbollah, a militant group allied to Hamas, have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October. But fears have surged of an all-out conflict in recent weeks, with the Zionists launching air strikes deeper into eastern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekaa valley area several times.

“(Zionist) fighter jets targeted a vehicle in the eastern Bekaa area of Suwairi, killing its Syrian driver,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity for security concerns.

Earlier on Sunday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency had said a strike on a vehicle in Suwairi injured the driver, before reporting that he had been killed. The NNA said he had been delivering food in a car that belonged to a supermarket owner.

Overnight on Sunday, an AFP correspondent said Zionist strikes targeted a Hezbollah center that had been deserted for some time, wounding four residents in nearby buildings. “The (Zionist) air force fired five missiles at a two-story inhabited building in Al-Osseira, on the outskirts of Baalbek,” he said, referring to the main city in the Bekaa valley.

The Zionist military said in a statement that fighter jets “struck a Hezbollah manufacturing site containing weapons in the area of Baalbek”. Later, Hezbollah said it fired “more than 60 Katyusha-type rockets” at two Zionist military positions in the occupied Golan Heights in response to the strikes.

The Zionist military also said “approximately 50 launches were identified from Lebanon toward (the north of the Zionist entity), a number of launches were intercepted while the rest fell in open areas”. The strike at Al-Osseira, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Zionist-Lebanese border, ended a period of relative calm that had lasted around 10 days. Hezbollah began launching near-daily attacks against the Zionist entity on October 8 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas in Gaza and said on Saturday it had carried out several more strikes. It says it will only end its attacks on the Zionist entity if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.