Jerusalem: About 35 rockets and missiles fired from Lebanon struck the city of Safed in northern Israel on Thursday evening, causing fires, power cuts and property damage, the Israeli military said.
“The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Aerial Defence Array successfully intercepted most of the launches,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
According to the country’s Magen David Adom rescue service, no deaths or injuries were reported.
A house was struck by one of the projectiles, the Merom HaGalil Regional Council said in a statement.
The Fire and Rescue Authority reported that several fires erupted and civilians were stuck in elevators due to power outages.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said in a statement that it had attacked the Israeli air base in Safed with Katyusha rockets, in response to the Israeli attacks on the city of Nabatieh in southern Lebanon and the town of Sohmor in eastern Lebanon a day earlier, Xinhua news agency reported.
Lebanese military sources told the news agency that some of the rockets were intercepted by Israeli Iron Dome missiles.
The fresh Hezbollah attacks took place amid rising tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border as Israel warned it was “ready” to launch a “full-scale” offensive against Hezbollah.
In a separate statement, the IDF said Israeli warplanes, earlier in the day, struck a Hezbollah military structure in the southern Lebanese village of Ramyah and killed two Hezbollah operatives in the village of At Tiri.
On the same day, unnamed Lebanese military sources confirmed to Xinhua that three Hezbollah members were killed and a fourth was wounded in two Israeli airstrikes on Ramyah and Haddatha.
Tensions have been rising along the Lebanon-Israel border since October 8, 2023, following a rocket barrage launched by Hezbollah toward Israel to show its support for the surprise attack on southern Israel launched by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip the day before.
–IANS