Hezbollah targets officers and soldiers in northern Israel
Hezbollah targeted Friday groups of soldiers and officers near the Shumira barracks and the Even Menachem settlement and an Israeli infantry force in Metulla while Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes on al-Labbouneh.
The Israeli artillery also shelled Rab Tlatine, Jabal Blat, al-Jebbayn, Tayr Harfa, al-Naqoura, Houla, Mays al-Jabal, and Aita al-Shaab.
Hezbollah said all targets were direct hits and inflicted casualties.
Since the war in Gaza began, there have been near-daily clashes between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces along the Lebanon-Israel border, with fears of an escalation to a full-scale war. The tensions put a major damper on travel to Lebanon, at least temporarily.
Hezbollah has been carrying out near-daily cross-border assaults in support of Gaza and Hamas.
Israel has been responding with its own bombardments in mostly tit-for-tat exchanges that have been largely contained to areas near the frontier, although fears remain of a broader conflagration.
- Displacement -
On the Lebanese side, more than 140 people have been killed since the cross-border hostilities began in October, most of them Hezbollah fighters -- including one announced on Thursday -- but also more than a dozen civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, four civilians and seven soldiers have been killed, according to officials.
According to updated figures from the International Organization for Migration, the hostilities have displaced more than 72,000 people in Lebanon, most of them in the country's south.
Thousands of civilians living along Israel's northern border with Lebanon have been evacuated by the army.
Despite holding sway over swathes of the country's south, Hezbollah has not had a visible military presence on Lebanon's southern border since the end of a 2006 war the group fought with Israel.
A United Nations Security Council Resolution that ended that war called for the removal of weapons in southern Lebanon from the hands of everyone except the Lebanese army and other state security forces.
On Monday, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna met with senior officials in Beirut, a day after visiting Israel and the occupied West Bank, as part of efforts to de-escalate border tensions.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Sunday said that ensuring the security of Israelis near the border meant pushing Hezbollah "north of the Litani River" in south Lebanon.
"There are two ways to do that: either by diplomacy or by force," Cohen said.
Source: Naharnet
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