Hezbollah rocket fire kills 2, injures 5 in northern Israel

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – Two Israelis were killed and five others injured in a rocket attack from Lebanon on Wednesday, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom said a man and woman in their forties were pronounced dead after sustaining critical injuries from rocket strikes on Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel.

The Israeli army confirmed that 20 rockets were fired from Lebanon toward Kiryat Shmona with air-raid siren sounding in the area.

A military statement said 40 more rockets were launched from Lebanon into northern Israel, injuring five people in Haifa and causing power outages in parts of Kiryat Bialik.

The army said some of the projectiles were intercepted, while others landed in the Upper Galilee and Haifa Bay areas.

Videos circulating on social media showed rockets falling in Haifa and nearby regions.

Lebanese group Hezbollah, for its part, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, saying the attacks targeted a deployment of Israeli forces in northern Israel.

The group also said that it thwarted infiltration attempts by Israeli ground forces in border towns in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military acknowledged that three of its soldiers were seriously injured in clashes.

Israel has mounted massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing more than 1,250 people, injuring 3,618 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 nearly 42,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

At least 2,119 people have since been killed and 10,019 others injured in Israeli attacks in Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities.

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 Mohammad Sio