Israel says it bombed Hezbollah arms depots in Lebanon, group says it hit back
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it bombed Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley overnight, its latest strike on arms depots in a major stronghold of the powerful Iranian-backed militia. The air attack came hours after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that “attacking munitions warehouses in Lebanon is preparation for anything that might happen.
Hezbollah said it fired Katyusha rockets into an Israeli military logistics site in the occupied Golan Heights of Syria in response to the strike on Lebanon’s Bekaa region.
For the past 10 months, Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been locked in hostilities parallel to the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has spilled over to several other fronts and raised fears of an all-out Middle East conflict.
While most of the exchanges of fire have played out along Lebanon’s volatile southern border with Israel, some Israeli strikes have occurred deeper in Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria.
There was no immediate confirmation from security sources in Lebanon that weapons depots were targeted on Tuesday. The sources said the strike was in a residential area near the eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa, an area populated mainly by Shiite Muslims from whom Hezbollah draws its support.
These sources in the security said the airstrikes killed at least two people and 19 others were injured. It was not clear whether the dead were civilians or fighters.
In a different attack, an Israeli airstrike hit a car on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon on Wednesday, killing a member of the Fatah faction’s armed wing, two Palestinian sources told Reuters.
Israel has carried out numerous air strikes against Hezbollah fighters and rocket launch sites in south Lebanon. More than 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since fighting broke out last October, including more than 400 Hezbollah fighters and 132 civilians according to a Reuters count. Attacks on arms depots have risen in recent weeks.
The Israeli military said that it had attacked a weapons depot used by Hezbollah militants in an airstrike on Saturday. At least 10 Syrian nationals, including two children, were killed as a result of that incident, Lebanon’s state news agency reported. Late Monday, another airstrike hit a Hezbollah weapons depot in the Bekaa region. In July, it bombed another depot storing Hezbollah ammunition in the southern Lebanese town of Adloun, three security sources told Reuters.
