Lebanon’s Hezbollah fires dozens of rockets at Israeli kibbutz after drone strike wounds civilians

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said that its fighters fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Saturday, targeting a kibbutz for the first time in nine months in retaliation for an Israeli drone strike earlier in the day that wounded several people including children.

Also Saturday, the militant Palestinian group Hamas said it fired rockets from Lebanon toward an Israeli army post in the northern Israeli village of Shomera in retaliation for the “Zionists massacres” in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has carried out such attacks form Lebanon over the past several months, but they have been rare.

On Saturday night, an Israeli airstrike on the southern coastal village of Adloun hit an arms depot and it was followed by a series of explosions that hit nearby villages with shrapnel, said state-run National News Agency, or NNA. The agency said that three people were slightly wounded in the nearby village of Kharayeb and hospitalized.

The agency didn’t give further details about the arms depot, but it was believed to belong to Hezbollah, which has a wide presence in the area. The explosions lasted more than an hour after the airstrike, NNA said.

Hezbollah’s attack earlier in the day with dozens of Katyusha rockets on the northern Israeli kibbutz of Dafna came few hours after an Israeli drone strike hit a car in the southern Lebanese village of Burj al-Muluk, and shrapnel from the missile wounded several people who were standing nearby. NNA said that the wounded civilians are Syrian citizens and they included children.

The Israeli military said that about 45 projectiles were detected crossing from Lebanon into northern Israel in three separate barrages. It said that some were intercepted, while others fell in open areas, causing no injuries, but triggering several fires in the Golan Heights.

On Friday, Hezbollah said that it fired rockets at three villages in northern Israel for the first time in retaliation for a strike that killed several people the night before.

Hezbollah began firing rockets shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, saying it aimed to ease pressure on Gaza. The exchange of fire and airstrikes, which has been limited to a few kilometers or miles on each side of the border, has displaced tens of thousands of people in both countries.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that his group would retaliate against Israeli strikes in Lebanon that inflict civilian casualties “by firing rockets and targeting new villages that were not targeted in the past.”

Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members, but also around 90 civilians and noncombatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed.