By Iyad Nabolsi
ISTANBUL (AA) - Hezbollah said Tuesday that it attacked six Israeli military positions in northern Israeli settlements using rockets and drones.
The group said in a series of statements that its fighters targeted military gatherings in Yiftah, Avivim, Biranit Orchards, Maroun El Ras and Metula with rockets.
It reported using a “swarm of kamikaze drones” to strike an Israeli military position in the settlement of Ya’ara.
Earlier Tuesday, Hezbollah said it observed an Israeli force that infiltrated from behind the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) position in the town of Labbouneh in the western sector of southern Lebanon.
The group added it engaged with the advancing force “using appropriate weapons, inflicting confirmed casualties of dead and wounded, which forced the enemy to withdraw behind the border fence from where they had infiltrated.”
It is the first time Hezbollah reported an attempted ground incursion by the Israeli army by infiltrating from the Western sector.
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, and displacing more than 1.2 million.
The aerial campaign is an escalation in a year-long 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 a ground invasion into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio