Hezbollah fires ‘dozens’ of rockets at Israel, its first attack in two days

The attack was in response to an Israeli bombing that left four dead in southern Lebanon / Photo: Reuters

The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah announced that it had launched “dozens” of rockets against northern Israel in response to a bombing that killed four civilians in southern Lebanon on Thursday, in its first attack since the assassination on Tuesday of the group’s top commander, Fuad Shukr.

“In response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on the town of Chama and the death of several civilians there, Islamic Resistance fighters fired dozens of ‘Katyusha’ rockets at the settlement of Matzuva,” the Lebanese movement announced in a statement.

This afternoon, an Israeli bombardment hit a house inhabited by a Syrian family in Chama, where four Syrian citizens died and five other Lebanese were injured to varying degrees, according to the report provided by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

However, the government department warned in a statement that due to the presence of many “body parts” at the scene of the crime, DNA tests will be necessary to determine the “final” number of deaths.

The attack on Matzuva is the first claimed by Hezbollah in just over 48 hours.

The Shiite group had frozen its operations on the border with the Jewish state since the bombing late on Tuesday that killed seven people, including its top commander, and wounded about 80 others in the southern suburbs of Beirut known as el Dahye.

The leader of the movement, Hassan Nasrallah, confirmed in a televised speech on Thursday that they will respond to the murder of Shukr, but the launch against Matzuva is part of the routine dynamics on the dividing line prior to the events of two days ago.

The bombing of Dahye and the subsequent assassination in Tehran of the political leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, have raised fears of a major escalation in the Middle East pending the announced responses to both attacks.

Beirut / EFE