One dead in Israel strikes on east Lebanon

Beirut – Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon killed one person Tuesday, a security source said, in an escalation of cross-border fire with the powerful Hezbollah movement that has raised fears of spiralling violence.

Since the day after the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October, Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire across Lebanon’s southern frontier, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said one person was killed and 10 others wounded in Tuesday’s strikes.

It was not immediately clear if the person killed was a fighter or a civilian.

The strikes destroyed a building in Sarain, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek, a key Hezbollah bastion near the border with Syria.

Another strike hit a building in the nearby town of Nabi Sheet, the source added.

The Israeli army said in a statement that “fighter jets struck two Hezbollah military command centres in the area of Baalbek, deep inside Lebanon”, adding that Hezbollah used the sites to store “significant assets used to strengthen its weapons arsenal”.

The army said the strikes came in retaliation for Hezbollah rocket “launches toward northern Israel” earlier Tuesday.

Hezbollah had said it launched “more than a hundred Katyusha rockets” at two military bases in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

That barrage came “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, the group had said in a statement.

On Monday, another Israeli air strike near Baalbek — around 100 kilometres from the border — killed one person, a security source had said.

– ‘Hezbollah’s aerial forces’ –

The Israeli military had said its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, killing two Hezbollah members, the first strikes on the Iran-backed group outside Lebanon’s south since the conflict erupted in October.

Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said.

Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday.

Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 318 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally.

In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.