BEIRUT: Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel on Saturday after an Israeli air strike that according to a Lebanese security source killed two civilians in the country’s south.

The Israeli military, whose forces have been trading regular cross-border fire with Hezbollah since early October, said its raid had targeted two operatives from the group.

The movement said it had retaliated by launching dozens of rockets at the border town of Kiryat Shmona, in Israel’s north. Hezbollah had already launched multiple attacks against Israeli military positions along the border on Saturday.

The security source said that “two civilians were filling up water from a roadside spring” in south Lebanon’s Deir Mimas area when they were killed in an “Israeli air strike”.

A source close to Hezbollah said one of the men was a member of the group and the father of a fighter who had been killed, while the second man was a member of Hezbollah ally the Amal movement. The pair were “civilians, not fighters”, the source added.

The Israeli army said in a statement that “soldiers identified two Hezbollah terrorists preparing to launch projectiles toward Israeli territory in the area of Deir Mimas in southern Lebanon”.

“Shortly following the identification, the IAF (air force) struck the terrorists,” the statement added.

Hezbollah said it had launched rockets “in response to the aggressions by the Israeli enemy against the villages... and civilians in the south”.

Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the October 7 raid.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said an “enemy drone” killed two men on Saturday in the same area, identifying one of them as a local council member for the Amal movement in the nearby village of Kfar Kila.

It said they were collecting water from the spring “to take it for livestock in Kfar Kila”. The Amal movement released a statement saying one of its members, born in 1964, was killed.

In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed more than 500 people, mostly fighters but also including more than 90 civilians, according to a tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2024