Hezbollah says fired rockets after Israeli airstrikes

The militant Hezbollah group said it fired a barrage of rockets near Israeli positions close to the Lebanese border on Friday, calling it retaliation for Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon a day earlier.

In a statement, Hezbollah says it hit “open fields” near Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa farms area, with “dozens” of rockets. No casualties were reported.

Israel’s army said it is firing back after at least ten rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory, most of them intercepted by the defense system known as the Iron Dome. The rest of the rockets landed in open areas.

Manar TV of Hezbollah says Israeli warplanes are flying at low-altitude over southeast Lebanon.

Earlier, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that five rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward an Israeli army position in the disputed Shebaa Farms area on the edge of the Golan Heights. The station referred to the firing as “unknown rockets,” an apparent term to hint that the group was not behind the attack.

Meanwhile, earlier, the Israeli army in a statement said sirens sounded before noon in the Golan Heights and Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border.

A Lebanese army official said the military had no confirmation yet of rockets fired from south Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah group has stockpiled thousands of rockets.

The report comes after several days of fire over the border, including rare Israeli airstrikes on what the army said are launch sites.

The overnight airstrikes were a marked escalation at a politically sensitive time. Israel’s new eight-party governing coalition is trying to keep peace under a fragile cease-fire that ended an 11-day war with Hamas’ militant rulers in Gaza in May.

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