UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS, CHANGES LEDE
By Wassim Seif El Din
BEIRUT (AA) – Hezbollah fired more than 200 rockets into northern Israel, the Lebanese group said on Thursday, a day after the killing of a top military commander in an Israeli airstrike.
Hezbollah said the rocket fire targeted several military bases in northern Israel, including the 91st Division HQ in Ayelet Barracks, the 7th Armored Brigade HQ in Katsaviya Barracks, the 7th Brigade’s Armored Battalion HQ in Gamla Barracks, the 210th Division HQ in Nafah Base, and the Artillery Regiment HQ in Yarden Barracks.
The Lebanese group said that it had also targeted the Israeli army’s Roueissat al-Alam outpost, the Marj post and Al-Baghdadi site in southern Lebanon with missiles.
Hezbollah said the rocket attacks came in response to Israel’s assassination of its commander Mohamed Naim Nasser, 59, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the coastal city of Tyre on Wednesday.
The Israeli army said Wednesday that Nasser was the commander of Hezbollah’s Aziz unit, one of the group’s three regional divisions in southern Lebanon, and was responsible for firing rockets into northern Israel.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, meanwhile, reported that one person was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern town of Houla.
Israeli air and artillery shelling was also reported in the border towns of Naqoura, Adaisseh, Khiam and Bint Jbeil, while fighter jets breached the sound barrier over Beirut, Aramoun, Bchamoun, Shouf, Iqlim al-Kharrub, and Jezzine.
Lebanese media said a reporter for the Doha-based Al Jazeera television, Ahmed Ghanem, was injured in an Israeli strike on his home on the outskirts of Kafr Shuba in southern Lebanon.
Tensions have soared along Lebanon’s border with Israel amid cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israeli forces as Tel Aviv pressed ahead with its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 38,000 people since Oct. 7 last year.
*Writing by Ahmed Asmar and Mohammad Sio