8 Hezbollah men among 16 killed in Lebanon

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement announced the deaths of eight of its members after a day of cross-border fire with Israel that left at least 16 people dead, making Wednesday the deadliest day in more than five months of fighting along the border.

Hezbollah said it had fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel after its neighbour carried out a deadly strike on southern Lebanon.

One Israeli civilian was killed by the rocket fire.

Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, has exchanged neardaily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 triggering war in Gaza.

Rescuers among dead

The pro-Iranian movement said four of its fighters and two rescuers were killed, while its ally the Amal movement said it had lost two members, including a rescuer.

An official from the Jamaa Islamiya militant group had earlier told AFP that seven “rescuers” were killed in Israeli strikes.

Israeli rescue teams searching a damaged building in the border town of Kiryat Shmona “found a 25-year-old who was unconscious, with no pulse and not breathing”, and pronounced him dead at the scene, the Magen David Adom emergency service said.

Rockets fired

Hezbollah said its fighters fired “dozens of rockets” at Kiryat Shmona following what it called “the massacre committed by the Zionist enemy [Israel]” in the south Lebanon village of Habariyeh.

The emergency response arm of Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese militant group closely linked to Hamas, said “a number” of people were killed in the overnight Israeli strike in Habariyeh.