The security situation in southern Lebanon has reached alarming levels after Hezbollah carried out 22 military operations on Thursday, a day after an Israeli airstrike on a home killed six of the group’s senior fighters.
The waves of rockets sent over the border represented one of the most intense bombardments since Hezbollah started attacking Israeli posts in the country's north at the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
Hezbollah said in a series of statements released Thursday that the volleys it fired toward Israeli posts included 48 Katyusha rockets that were directed at an Israeli army base in Beit Zeitem, about 10 kilometers south of the border.
In another attack, Hezbollah said its fighters monitored four Israeli soldiers as they took positions inside a house in the Manara Kibbutz then fired an anti-tank missile that destroyed the house and killed the soldiers.
Hezbollah released around 22 statements claiming attacks on Thursday alone making it a record in one day since the fighting began last month. The group said its fighters also struck Israeli tanks.
The intense fire followed an Israeli airstrike on a house in Beit Yahoun, a village in southern Lebanon, that killed five senior fighters, including Abbas Raad, the son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc in Lebanon, Mohammed Raad.
The death toll rose to six when Hezbollah issued another statement before the funeral of the slain fighters.
Two leaders of Hezbollah's elite Al-Radwan force were among the five killed, a source close to the group told Agence France Presse.
