Hezbollah targets Ras al-Naqoura post with suicide drone

Hezbollah attacked Monday the Ras al-Naqoura Israeli post with a suicide drone while Israeli artillery and warplanes bombed the Marjaaoun plain and al-Khiam.

Warplanes had struck overnight a house in Kfarkela and the town of Sultaniyeh in southern Lebanon, killing at least three people.

Hezbollah said one of its fighters, identified as Ali Ahmed Hussein and nicknamed Abbas Jaafar, has been killed, without saying where or when he died. Israel said Hussein was a Hezbollah commander and was killed in the Sultaniyeh strike along with two other Hezbollah members.

The Israeli army had said Sunday that it has reached "another phase" of preparation on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has traded fire with Hezbollah for months.

The statement came after the military said its fighter jets struck a compound of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Forces "in the area of Khiam", several kilometers north of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as well as a command center near Toura, northeast of the coastal city of Tyre. Other strikes targeted Janta and Sifri in the Bekaa Valley, around 80 kilometers from the closest Israeli frontier.

Hezbollah for its part carried out Sunday four attacks, including an attack with a suicide drone, on military bases, command centers, and soldiers in northern Israel and in the occupied Shebaa Farms and Kfarshouba Hills.

The cross-border hostilities have killed at least 359 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally, raising fears of all-out conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, which last went to war in 2006.

The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and in northern Israel, where the military says 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed.