Beirut: A hospital director and three Lebanese security sources said that nine civilians, including four children, were killed in a barrage of Israeli strikes on villages in southern Lebanon, while Israel said it responded to Hezbollah missiles that killed a soldier.
The sources said that a woman and her two children were martyred in an Israeli raid on the village of Al-Sawana.
An attack on a building in Nabatieh led to the deaths of two other children, three women, and a man, according to the director of the town’s hospital, Hassan Wazni, and three other security sources. Wazni told Reuters that seven others arrived at the hospital to receive treatment after the raid.
Four Hezbollah fighters were killed in separate raids, according to the group and security sources.
Hezbollah and the Israeli army have been exchanging fire for more than four months, after the Lebanese armed group fired rockets across the disputed border in support of its Palestinian ally, Hamas, which launched a deadly attack on Israel.
Hezbollah did not announce any operations on Wednesday. The head of its Executive Council said that the Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory on Wednesday (Thursday EST) “cannot go unanswered.”
An Israeli government spokesman told reporters that the barrage of rockets from Lebanon on Wednesday morning killed an Israeli woman and transported eight others to the hospital. The army later said that the woman who was killed was a soldier.
As we have repeatedly made clear, Israel is not interested in war on two fronts. But if we are provoked, we will respond forcefully,” said her spokeswoman Ilana Stein.