The militant Hizbullah group has fired more than 50 rockets at military posts in northern Israel, a day after an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Lebanon killed five of the group’s senior fighters.
The waves of rockets sent over the border represented one of the most intense bombardments since Hizbullah started attacking Israeli posts in the country’s north at the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
Hizbullah has said that by heating up its actions on the Israel-Lebanon border, it is easing pressure on the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s crushing aerial, ground and naval offensive has left more than 13,300 Palestinians dead and caused wide destruction in the sealed-off enclave.
The war was triggered by an October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that left about 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, and resulted in about 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.
An agreement for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza and the release of dozens of hostages held by the militants and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, was set to take place on Thursday but appeared to have hit a last-minute snag.
Hizbullah said in a series of statements that the volleys it fired toward Israeli posts included 48 Katyusha rockets that were directed at an Israeli army base in Beit Zeitem, about six miles south of the border.
The group said its fighters also struck tanks and locations where Israeli troops were taking positions.
The intense fire followed an Israeli air strike on a house in Beit Yahoun, a village in southern Lebanon, that killed the five senior fighters, including Abbas Raad, the son of the head of Hizbullah's 13-member parliamentary bloc in Lebanon, Mohammed Raad.
The deaths bring the number of Hizbullah fighters who have been killed in seven weeks of fighting to at least 83.
Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Beirut on Thursday.
They discussed the ongoing war in Gaza and efforts to “stop the Israeli aggression”, as well as the situation at the tense Lebanon-Israel border, according to a statement released by Hizbullah.
Mr Amirabdollahian warned in comments to journalists upon his arrival in Lebanon on Wednesday that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war could “spiral out of control” if a truce does not last.
Iran-backed factions in Iraq, including the militant group Kataib Hizbullah, have carried out more than 60 and rocket or suicide drone attacks at bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria. Kataib Hizbullah is allied with Lebanon’s Hizbullah but the groups have different leaders.
The US military said on Thursday that one of its warships in the Red Sea shot down bomb-carrying drones launched from territory controlled by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The American military’s Central Command said the USS Thomas Hudner, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shot down the drones early on Thursday morning. “The ship and crew sustained no damage or injury,” Central Command said.
