Hezbollah says it fired over 60 rockets at Israeli base near Lebanese border

By Anadolu staff

Lebanese group Hezbollah announced on Saturday that it had fired more than 60 rockets at an Israeli army base on the border with Lebanon in response to the assassination earlier this week of Hamas’ deputy chief.

“In a first reaction to the crime of assassinating the great leader Sheikh Salih al-Arouri, the Islamic resistance (Hezbollah) targeted the Meron air control base with 62 different types of missiles,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

The Israeli army responded by targeting Hezbollah sites, it said.

In a statement, the Israeli army said that “sirens sounded in northern Israel due to the firing of approximately 40 rockets from Lebanon towards the Meron region.”

Other attacks were also reported in northern Israel, the army added, without providing further details.

Arouri was killed Tuesday in an Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office building in Beirut.

He was the highest-ranking Hamas leader to have been killed by Israel since the outbreak of the conflict in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.

Tension has flared along the border between Lebanon and Israel amid intermittent exchanges of rockets and gunfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, in the deadliest clashes since the two sides fought a full-scale war in 2006.

The border tension comes amid an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi