Hezbollah simultaneously attacks 19 Israeli posts as Hamas fires rockets from Lebanon

Hezbollah on Thursday said its fighters carried out a simultaneous attack against 19 Israeli military posts along the tense Lebanon-Israel border, in the group's fiercest escalation against Israel since October 8 and on the eve of an anticipated speech by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on the Israel-Hamas war and the border clashes.

Hezbollah said the attacks in which mortar fire and antitank missiles were used coincided with two suicide drone attacks on the main Israeli post in the occupied Shebaa Farms. Media reports said Israeli helicopters were seen transporting a large number of casualties from the site.

The military wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas for its part said it fired 12 rockets from Lebanon toward the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

The Qassam Brigades said in a statement that Thursday's rocket attack came in retaliation for the “occupation’s massacres against our people in Gaza.” The firing of the rockets coincided with Hezbollah's massive attack.

The Hamas attack wounded two people in Kiryat Shmona, Israel's Magen David Adom emergency medical service said. One of the wounded was "a 25-year-old man in moderate condition who was injured by shrapnel," the medical service said.

An AFP photographer saw Israeli emergency crews checking the debris of burnt out vehicles following the strikes in Kiryat Shmona. Videos released by the fire department and circulating on social media showed a street ablaze, a wrecked car and a damaged building in the town that had been mostly evacuated at the beginning of the war.

The Israeli military later said warplanes and helicopter gunships retaliated massively by striking at Hezbollah command centers, arms depots and sites from where the rockets were fired.

Unprecedented Israeli artillery shelling also targeted Lebanese border areas along the entire frontier with Israel.

The National News Agency said the Israeli attacks killed five people and wounded two others in south Lebanon.

Four people were killed in Israeli shelling in the al-Slouqi Valley, NNA said. Lebanese national Hisham Ismail was meanwhile killed when Israeli shelling targeted his home in the southern border town of Mays al-Jabal while another man was wounded. An Israeli shell also wounded a Syrian man when his tent was bombed in the al-Wazzani area.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen escalating tit-for-tat exchanges, mainly between the Israeli army and Hamas ally Hezbollah, since the Palestinian militants launched a shock October 7 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, stoking fears of a regional conflagration.

Israel has carried out relentless strikes on Gaza since Hamas militants attacked border communities and military outposts on October 7.