The Israeli military said on Wednesday its fighter jets “began a series of strikes in Lebanon“, raising fears of a war between the two countries after months of cross-border fire.
The strikes came hours after fire from Lebanon wounded multiple people in northern Israel, according to medics.
Seven people were wounded, five of them in the town of Safed, the Magen David Adom emergency service said.
Fighter jets struck a series of “Hezbollah terror targets” in the areas of Jabal El Braij, Houneh, Dunin, Adchit and Sawwaneh, the military said.
Lebanese media reported air raids on southern villages including Adchit, Sawwaneh and Shihabiyeh.
An AFP photographer saw medics and troops evacuating a wounded person by military helicopter from Safed’s Ziv hospital.
There was no immediate claim for the rocket launches from Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli troops since the outbreak of the war in Gaza more than four months ago.
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said after meeting commanders near the border with Lebanon that Israel’s “next campaign will be very much on the offensive, and we will use all the tools and all capabilities”.
“We are intensifying the strikes all the time, and Hezbollah are paying an increasingly heavy price,” he said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said that fire from southern Lebanon will end “when the attack on Gaza stops and there is a ceasefire” between the group’s Palestinian allies Hamas and arch-foe Israel.
“If they (Israel) broaden the confrontation, we will do the same,” Nasrallah warned in a televised address.
Fears have grown of another full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, with tens of thousands displaced on both sides of the border amid soaring regional tensions.
“I don’t know when the war in the north is, I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past,” Halevi said last month.
Since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war on October 7, at least 243 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 30 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to Israeli official figures.
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