Nasrallah says Hezbollah, Iran ‘obliged to respond’ to Israel after Haniyeh, Shukr killings

BERIUT: A Lebanese security source said six Hezbollah fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday, with the group saying strikes on northern Israel and low-flying Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut.
Hezbollah has traded with Israel almost daily in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the Gaza war.
Tensions rose last week as Iran and its allies vowed revenge for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and after an Israeli strike killed Hezbollah's top military commander Fuad Shukr in a southern suburb of Beirut.
Lebanon's health ministry said an “Israeli enemy airstrike on a house in the town of Mayfadun”, near the southern town of Nabatiyeh, killed five people, while another Israeli attack in the Adaysseh area killed one person.
The dead in both locations were “Hezbollah fighters,” a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Hezbollah announced that five fighters were killed, without specifying where they died.
The Israeli military said its air force “struck a Hezbollah military structure” in the Nabatiyeh area that was being used “to advance terrorist attacks” against Israel.
Hezbollah claimed several attacks on Israeli positions on Tuesday, including one with “explosive-laden drones” targeting a barracks north of the coastal city of Acre.
The Israeli military said “a number of enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) crossing from Lebanon were identified”, adding that “several civilians were injured south of Nahariya” near Acre.
It later said that an initial investigation showed that one of its anti-missile missiles “missed its target and hit the ground, injuring several civilians”, adding that “the incident is under investigation”.
Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service said rescuers were treating “a 30-year-old man in serious condition and a 30-year-old woman in mild to moderate condition with shrapnel injuries.”
Hezbollah said the drone strike was in response to an airstrike on the southern village of Ebba on Monday, which the Israeli military said targeted the commander of the elite Radwan Force group.
Low-flying Israeli military jets broke the sound barrier over Beirut on Tuesday ahead of a speech by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanon's National News Agency, a security source and AFP journalists.
Nasrallah made the televised remarks a week after the killing of Shukr, whom Israel described as the group's “supreme military commander” and Nasrallah's “right-hand man.”
Cross-border violence has killed about 556 people in Lebanon since October, mostly fighters but also including at least 116 civilians, according to AFP.
On the Israeli side, including the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 25 civilians were killed, according to army figures.
Diplomatic efforts have gone into overdrive to avert a regional conflagration and full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought in the summer of 2006.

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