Hezbollah targets Israeli sites in Golan heights amid escalation

By Yakut Dandashi

ISTANBUL (AA) - Hezbollah said Sunday it targeted several Israeli sites in the Golan Heights in response to civilian casualties in overnight Israeli raids in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese group said its fighters targeted “the Israeli sites of Nafah, Yarden and Keila in the occupied Syrian Golan heights with dozens of Katyusha rockets.”

The attacks were in response to “the Israeli night raids targeting a number of villages and towns the most recent of which were on Khiam and Kafr Kila and resulted in a number of civilian fatalities and injuries,” it said.

There were no reports on the number of casualties in the Israeli attacks.

Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation said, "Alarm sirens are sounding in the northern Golan as a result of missile launches from Lebanon."

Israeli Channel 12 also reported Sunday that sirens were sounding again in northern Israel.

It earlier reported that sirens sounded in the Upper Galilee on the border with Lebanon, as Iran carried out its attack.

Iran began an airborne attack Saturday against Israel in retaliation for an April 1 airstrike on its diplomatic facility in the Syrian capital. The strike killed at least seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two top generals.

Tehran has accused Israel of carrying out the attack and vowed to respond. Tel Aviv has not officially claimed responsibility for the attack but it has for months carried out several strikes against Iranian targets across Syria.

Iran and Hezbollah, its main ally in Lebanon, have said the attack will not go unpunished.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi