Beirut, Lebanon – Lebanon’s Hizbollah group said it attacked an Israeli army base near the border on Wednesday, with the latest in a series of tit-for-tat strikes wounding 14 soldiers, according to Israel’s military.
Israel and Hizbollah, an Iran-backed Hamas ally, have been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian group attacked southern Israel on October 7, triggering war in the Gaza Strip.
But Hizbollah strikes in the past few days have included a growing use of explosive drones and wounded people in Israel, which has struck increasingly deeper into Lebanon in recent weeks.
Hours after the strike on Arab al-Aramshe, an Arab-majority village in northern Israel near the border, Israeli forces hit targets in eastern Lebanon, a Hizbollah source told AFP.
According to the source, the strikes targeted a warehouse in Iaat, a residential area near Baalbek, and “lightly” wounded one man.
The Israeli military said its “fighter jets struck significant Hizbollah terrorist infrastructure” used by the group’s air defence in the Baalbek area.
The official National News Agency reported three drone strikes in the area, a Hizbollah stronghold far from the border with Israel.
An AFP photographer said the warehouse that was hit stored vegetables and agricultural produce.
The Israeli military earlier said 14 soldiers were wounded in the strike on northern Israel, including six seriously.
Hizbollah said it launched “a combined attack with guided missiles and explosive drones on a new military reconnaissance command centre in Arab al-Aramshe”.
According to the Israeli army, “a number of launches from Lebanon were identified crossing into the area of Arab al-Aramshe,” and Israeli forces struck the sources of the fire.
Hizbollah said the attack came “in response to the enemy assassinating a number of resistance fighters in Ain Baal and Shehabiya” on Tuesday.
It also came with regional tensions high after Iran launched a direct attack on Israel over the weekend in retaliation for a deadly strike on Tehran’s Damascus consulate.
On Tuesday, Israel said its strikes in south Lebanon killed two local Hizbollah commanders and another operative, with the Iran-backed group saying three of its members were killed as it launched rockets in retaliation.
Local Israeli authorities said three people were wounded in a strike from Lebanon earlier that day.
On Monday, Hizbollah targeted Israeli troops with explosive devices, wounding four soldiers who crossed into Lebanese territory, the first such attack in six months of clashes.
The violence has killed at least 368 people in Lebanon, mostly Hizbollah fighters but also at least 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
In Israel, the military says 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed near the northern border since hostilities began.
Tens of thousands of civilians have fled their homes on both sides of the border, with the violence fuelling fears of all-out conflict between Hizbollah and Israel, which last went to war in 2006.