The Israeli military said it shelled unspecified targets in neighbouring south Lebanon shortly after cross-border rocket fire hit northern Israel on Sunday.
“The Israel Defence Forces have responded with targeted artillery fire following the rockets that hit Israel earlier today from southern Lebanon,” an English-language army statement said.
Israeli military sources told AFP that one rocket crashed into the Galilee region and the impact of another was heard.
No casualties were reported.
The sources said the military ordered local residents into bomb shelters.
In Lebanon, the national news agency NNA said Israel fired nine rounds of artillery at the south.
The rocket fire from the Hezbollah heartland of south Lebanon followed the killing of Samir Kantar, a militant in the Shiite group notorious for the 1979 murder of three Israelis, including a four-year-old girl.
Hezbollah said the 54-year-old Kantar was killed in an Israeli air strike near the Syrian capital Damascus on Saturday night.
There was no confirmation from Israel that it was responsible for Kantar’s killing.
Several rockets were fired from Lebanon in summer 2014 as Israel waged war against the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli artillery returned fire.
The border region has otherwise been largely quiet since Hezbollah and Israel fought a devastating war in 2006 that left much of southern Lebanon in ruins.
Northern Israel
The mayor of Nahariya and the head of the Shlomi Regional Council in northern Israel ordered Sunday the opening of bomb shelters in their respective locales, after at least three rockets landed earlier in the evening in open areas of the Western Galilee region according to Israeli media.
All three rockets reportedly landed near Shlomi, a small town near the Lebanese border, while sirens sounded in Nahariya, a larger coastal city about 10 kilometers southwest.
PFLP-GC takes responsibility for attack
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a Syria-based Palestinian terror group, took responsibility for the rocket fire, according to Lebanese media cited by Israel’s Channel 2.
UNIFIL
UNIFIL, the UN force charged with overseeing security in south Lebanon, released a statement saying it had stepped up patrols along the border between Israel and Lebanon in a bid to tamp down on cross-border violence.
The statement noted that UNIFIL radars detected three rockets shot at Israel earlier in the evening.
UNIFIL chief Luciano Portolano added that he was in contact with officials in Lebanon and Israel in a bid to restore calm.
“This is a serious incident in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and is clearly directed at undermining stability in the area. It is imperative to identify and apprehend the perpetrators of this attack. Additional troops have been deployed on the ground and patrols have been intensified across our area of operations in coordination with the LAF to prevent any further incidents,” Portolano said, according to the UNIFIL statement.
A Lebanese source told AFP that the rockets were Katyushas.
yahoo/AFP
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.