Hezbollah says launches rocket salvo at Israeli-occupied Golan
Smoke billows over the south Lebanon town of Al-Khiam following a reported Israeli air strike
Beirut – Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at an army position in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Friday, hours after launching a salvo at northern Israel.
Friday’s attack came as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited Beirut, and hours after Syria said it downed two drones near Damascus that it said entered its airspace from the Golan.
Hezbollah fighters targeted an Israeli army barracks “in the occupied Syrian Golan with dozens of Katyusha rockets”, the group said in a statement.
It had already claimed a number of other attacks on Friday on Israeli targets including “spy equipment” and a tank.
Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, the Lebanon-Israel border has seen near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
The latest salvo came after Hezbollah said it fired dozens of Katyusha rockets at northern Israel late Thursday in reponse to an Israeli drone strike which seriously wounded a Hezbollah commander in the south Lebanon city of Nabatiyeh.
The Israeli military said that fighter jets struck a “military site” where Hezbollah fighters were operating in Maroun al-Ras and “military compounds” in two other south Lebanon towns.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli bombardment of multiple locations in the south.
After his arrival in Beirut on Friday, Amir-Abdollahian vowed that Iran would “continue to strongly support the resistance and Lebanon”.
“We consider the security of Lebanon as the security of Iran and the region,” he told a press conference.
The Iranian minister is to hold talks on Saturday with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and other top officials.
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of diplomatic activity in the Lebanese capital, as Britain, France and Germany have all sent their foreign minister to appeal for a return to calm on the border.
Concerns have been growing that the Gaza conflict might trigger a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah like that of 2006.
During four months of cross-border fire, at least 228 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 27 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, 15 people have been killed, six of them civilians, according to the Israeli army.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.