Hezbollah fires over 60 rockets at Israeli military base
Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement on Saturday fired more than 60 rockets at an Israeli military base, the group said, describing the barrage as a response to the killing of Hamas’s deputy leader in Beirut.
“As part of the initial response to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri... the Islamic resistance (Hezbollah) targeted the Meron air control base with 62 various types of missiles,” the group said in a statement.
The Lebanon border with the occupied territories has seen regular exchanges of fire, mainly between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, according to AFP.
Arouri’s assassination on Tuesday in southern Beirut, which a US defense official has told AFP was carried out by Israel, has raised fears of further escalation.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, the first on the Lebanese capital since hostilities began last year.
The Israeli military said it had identified around 40 rocket launches from Lebanese territory on Saturday morning, adding in a statement that its forces had struck a cell responsible for some of the launches shortly thereafter.
Air raid sirens went off in towns and cities across northern Israel, later also blaring in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Later on Saturday, Hezbollah said it launched additional attacks on Israeli troops and positions, with the Israeli army saying it had retaliated.
In a speech Friday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel that the group will respond swiftly “on the battlefield” to Arouri’s assassination.
Nearly three months of cross-border fire have killed 175 people in Lebanon, including 129 Hezbollah fighters, but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists, according to an AFP tally.
In northern Israel, nine soldiers and at least four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.
The escalation forced the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to visit Lebanon on Saturday.
Borrell warned against a regional conflict that would involve Lebanon.
“It is imperative to avoid regional escalation in the Middle East. It is absolutely necessary to avoid Lebanon being dragged into a regional conflict,” Borrell said during a press conference in Beirut with Lebanon’s foreign minister.
“I am sending this message to Israel too: nobody will win from a regional conflict,” he added.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance group and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel.
But a strike that killed Hamas’s deputy leader intensified fears of a wider conflagration.
“I think that the war can be prevented, has to be avoided and diplomacy can prevail,” Borrell told reporters.
Earlier Saturday, Borrell met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, United Nations peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) commander Aroldo Lazaro and the influential speaker of parliament Nabih Berri.
His visit is part of a diplomatic push to avoid further regional escalation and call for a solution to the Gaza war.
“Diplomatic channels have to be open to signal that the war is not the only option but it is the worst option,” he said.