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Hezbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas announced they launched rocket attacks on Israeli positions on Saturday (Jul 20) to retaliate for a strike that injured civilians in southern Lebanon and due to the casualties from the Gaza conflict.
Hezbollah has been exchanging nearly daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel led to war in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier on Saturday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Syrian nationals, including children, were injured when an “enemy drone targeted an empty four-wheel drive” near their tent, less than four kilometers from the border.
Dr. Mouenes Kalakesh, head of Marjayoun government hospital, stated that a woman and her three children, two of whom are minors, were admitted with shrapnel injuries following the strike near Burj al-Muluk. Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition due to shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.
Hezbollah claimed it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on Dafna, a northern Israeli area targeted for the first time by the group, “in response to the attack on civilians.”
On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that his Iran-backed group would target new sites in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli strikes.
Later on Saturday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said they fired a rocket salvo from southern Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee “in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli army reported that a total of 45 “projectiles” were fired from Lebanon on Saturday afternoon towards the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee, with no casualties reported.
The army stated it struck “the launcher… in southern Lebanon from which the projectiles were launched toward the Golan Heights,” and also targeted “an additional Hezbollah launcher.”
On Thursday, Israeli strikes killed at least five people, including the commander of a Hamas-allied group in Lebanon, according to militant groups and a security source.
On Tuesday, Lebanese official media reported separate Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed five Syrians, including three children, prompting Hezbollah to retaliate with rocket fire at Israel.
Since the conflict began in October, at least 515 people in Lebanon have been killed, according to an AFP tally. Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.
On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.
