On the eve of a speech by Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah launched a series of attacks this Thursday against Israeli positions, a few hours after the discovery of the bodies of two shepherds mowed down by bullets near the border with Israel. These clashes left at least two injured on the Israeli side and one injured in Lebanon.
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The exchanges of fire between the Hezbollah and the Israeli army transformed, late Thursday afternoon, into widespread confrontation from the eastern sector, bordering the Golan, to Ras Naqoura, on the Mediterranean coast.
Hezbollah has deployed a new weapon on the battlefield: kamikaze drones. The Shiite party announced that two of these aircraft attacked the headquarters of an Israeli battalion in the Shebaa Farms, an area occupied by Israel and claimed by the Lebanon, in the extreme southeast of the country. Hassan Nasrallah’s party simultaneously launched artillery, rocket and guided missile attacks towards half of the Israeli military border positions, i.e. around twenty fortified bases, barracks and outposts, reports our correspondent in Beirut, Paul Khalifeh.
A salvo of rockets also left southern Lebanon towards northern Galilee. This shot was claimed by Hamas, which announced in a press release that it had launched twelve rockets at the town of Kyriat Chmona, in northern Israel. Here, two people were injured, according to the Israeli emergency services and a building and cars were hit, according to the first images from Israeli public television. The town of Kiryat Shmona, bordering Lebanon, was virtually evacuated of its civilian population, i.e. 22,500 inhabitants, on October 20, on orders from the army.
Israeli response
The Israeli response was just as violent. Planes carried out raids near five Lebanese towns and artillery fired dozens of large-caliber shells along the border. Two uninhabited houses were hit in two villages. The strike targeted, according to an Israeli army statement, “ infrastructures and headquarters of fighters as well as infrastructures belonging to the leadership of the terrorist movement » Shia.
This rise in tensions on Israel’s northern border comes as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is due to give a speech Friday on the involvement, or not, of the Shiite group in the conflict that broke out between Hamas and Israel. Are we witnessing the opening of a second front feared by Israel? “We must remain cautious,” retorts Thierry Coville, researcher at IRIS (Institute of International and Strategic Relations), who recalls that the last war waged by Hezbollah cost it dearly.
Hezbollah, like Iran, wants to increase the military balance of power with Israel while avoiding falling into all-out war with Israel. So you have to be careful.
Thierry Coville, researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations and specialist on Iran
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