UPDATE - Hezbollah claims rocket attacks on troop deployments in northern Israel

UPDATES WITH SECOND DRONE DOWNED, CHANGES DECK, LEDE

By Anadolu staff

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Lebanese group Hezbollah Tuesday claimed rocket attacks on deployments of Israeli forces in northern Israel and shooting down two drones over Lebanon.

The group said its fighters targeted Israeli soldiers with rockets in the vicinity of Al-Marj military site in northern Israel.

Hezbollah fighters also shelled Israeli soldiers in the occupied Lebanese Sheba Farms and the settlement of Kiryat Shmona near the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah fighters clashed with Israeli ground forces trying to infiltrate into the outskirts of Rab El-Thalathine town in southern Lebanon, the group said.

Hezbollah also said that it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone flying over Lebanon last night, without specifying where exactly the drone was intercepted.

Later in the evening, the Lebanese group claimed downing another Israeli Hermes 450 drone.

“The drone was seen burning in the skies over occupied Palestine,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Israel has mounted massive airstrikes across Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing at least 1,542 people, injuring over 4,555 others, and displacing more than 1.34 million people.

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 42,300 people, most of them women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

Despite international warnings that the Mideast was on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, it expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar