Israeli Strikes in Lebanon Kill Four, Escalate Tensions

On Friday, Israeli artillery shelled the southern border town of Houla and the outskirts of Kfarshouba and Kfarhamam, following Israeli strikes that killed at least five people in Lebanon the day before.

In retaliation, Hezbollah targeted Abirim, Neve Ziv, and Manot in northern Israel for the first time since the war began. This was in response to Israeli attacks on civilians in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah issued a statement promising to target new settlements if further attacks on civilians occurred.

Additionally, Hezbollah fired a heavy rocket at a post in the occupied Kfarshouba Hills and later launched a Burkan rocket at soldiers in the Ramim barracks, along with artillery shells targeting Metula and Israeli artillery positions in Kherbet Ma’er.

On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a house near Jmaijmeh killed two people and injured eighteen others. This came hours after drone strikes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley killed a Hezbollah member and a commander of Hamas-allied al-Jamaa al-Islamiya. Among the dead in the Jmaijmeh strike were two Hezbollah members, including Ali Jaafar Maatouq, identified as a commander of its elite Al Radwan unit.

The Israeli army claimed it killed another Al Radwan commander in Majdal Selm near Jmaijmeh, though Lebanese sources have not confirmed this. The Israeli military also reported the death of a senior officer who was injured in a Hezbollah strike on the Golan Heights two weeks ago.

Hezbollah conducted nine attacks on Israeli positions in northern Israel and the occupied Kfarshouba Hills on Thursday, two of which were in retaliation for the strikes on Ghazzeh and Jbal el-Botm. They also used suicide drones to attack a military base near Safad and a command center near Ya’ara in northern Israel.

Since October, cross-border violence has resulted in 516 deaths in Lebanon, including at least 104 civilians, according to AFP. On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed. This escalating violence has sparked fears of a full-scale conflict between the two adversaries, who last went to war in 2006.