2 Israelis injured by rocket fire from Lebanon

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – Two Israelis were injured on Thursday by rockets fired by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Israeli media said.

A military statement said some 40 rockets were fired from Lebanon into Upper Galilee in northern Israel.

According to Israel’s Army Radio, two people were lightly injured from shrapnel.

Israeli Channel 12 said a rocket hit a building in the Margaliot settlement, but caused no casualties.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, claimed to have killed two Hezbollah commanders and hit over 110 targets belonging to the Lebanese group across Lebanon over the last 24 hours.

Hezbollah, for its part, said that its fighters targeted with rockets a deployment of Israeli forces in the vicinity of Al-Marj military site and Kiryat Shmona settlement in northern Israel.

Israel has mounted massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing at least 1,323 people, injuring over 3,700 others, and displacing more than 1.2 million people.

The aerial campaign was an escalation in yearlong cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of Tel Aviv’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed over 42,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

Despite international warnings that the Middle East region was on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, Tel Aviv expanded the conflict by launching on Oct. 1 a ground invasion into southern Lebanon.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara