Beirut: Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Tuesday claimed that it had made its deepest attack into Israel since October, striking a barracks north of the city of Acre with drones and setting off sirens across the country's northern coastline.
The Israeli military, however, said that no bases had been hit and no casualties reported, adding that three drones had been identified and intercepted.
Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful regional proxy, has been engaged in escalating cross-border strikes with Israeli forces since the war in the Gaza Strip began more than six months ago. In the latest strike, it maintained it had launched a drone attack on an Israeli military barracks roughly 10 miles from the Lebanese border.
Footage that circulated Tuesday on Hezbollah-affiliated Telegram channels, and that was geolocated by The New York Times, shows people on a beach in Acre looking up at the sky as sirens go off and an explosion is heard.
The drone attack in Israel came after targeted killings by Israel of two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, both of whom the Israeli military claimed were involved in Hezbollah's aerial operations. The killings overnight and Tuesday were the latest in a string of assassinations of Hezbollah commanders and fighters, as the Lebanese militant group increasingly employs self-detonating drones to target Israeli military sites.
After the drone attack, an Israeli strike on a house in the southern Lebanese town of Hanin killed at least two people, one of them a child, according to Lebanon's state news agency. The Israeli military said that fighter jets had targeted "military structures" in the area where Hezbollah were operating, according to a statement.
Last week, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone and missile attack into northern Israel that left one soldier dead and 16 soldiers and two civilians injured, in one of the group's most damaging attacks in Israel in recent months.
Published 23 April 2024, 21:11 IST