Israel shells south Lebanon, airstrike wounds Al-Manar cameraman

Israeli artillery shelling targeted several Lebanese border areas on Saturday, as an Israeli airstrike wounded a cameraman from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.

State-run National News Agency said artillery shelling hit the Ain al-Zarqa area between the border towns of Tayr Harfa and Alma al-Shaab. Violent artillery shelling also targeted the outskirts of the border town of Deir Mimas and the Khardali Valley area.

And following an Israeli airstrike on an empty house in Kfarkila in the morning, an Israeli fighter jet fired a missile near a car transporting journalists from Al-Manar television in the al-Khardali area, wounding the network’s cameraman Khodor Markiz in the eye.

Several civilian cars and the correspondents of MTV and the National News Agency were also passing on the road during the strike.

Al-Manar reporter Ali Shoeib, who was with Markiz in the car, noted that the convoy of vehicles was passing in an area that is relatively distant from the clashes zone. “It is a road that links that Nabatieh region to the eastern and central sectors” of south Lebanon, Shoeib said.

“What happened will not scare us,” he stressed.

Hezbollah meanwhile announced the death of two more of its fighters in south Lebanon.

Since hostilities began on October 8, a day after Hamas’ unprecedented operation in south Israel, more than 140 people have been killed in south Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including more than a dozen civilians, three of them journalists.

On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and eight soldiers have been killed, according to Israeli officials.