Hezbollah strikes Safed, Yiftah settlement, artillery bunkers in northern Israel

By Wassim Seif El Din

BEIRUT (AA) — Lebanese group Hezbollah on Wednesday announced cross-border rocket strikes targeting the city of Safed and the illegal settlement of Yiftah, as well as artillery bunkers in other parts of northern Israel.

In a statement, Hezbollah said its fighters struck bunkers in the areas of Dishon and Dalton in the attack that came in response to Israeli aggression on Lebanon.

In another statement, the resistance group said it struck Safed and Yiftah, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied Golan Heights, with barrages of rockets.

The Israeli army also released a statement, saying that sirens were activated in Safed and its surrounding areas following a barrage of 50 rockets from Lebanon early Wednesday at midnight.

The Safed municipality claimed that the strikes caused minor damage in a building and that two people were lightly injured, according to the Times of Israel news website.

Late on Tuesday, the Israeli army carried out a series of airstrikes on several towns and regions in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing at least 23 people and injuring 31 others.

Israel has mounted a huge air campaign in Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing more than 1 million.

The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of its offensive on the Gaza Strip, in which Israel has killed nearly 42,400 people, most of them women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

Israel expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching an incursion into southern Lebanon.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar