According to a press release from the Islamist movement supported by Iran, these rockets were launched this Friday, April 12 in response to attacks “against southern villages and civilian homes.”
Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, announced this Friday April 12 that it had launched “dozens of rockets” at Israeli positions in the Upper Galilee, in response, according to it, to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah fighters attacked “enemy artillery positions (…) with dozens of Katyusha-type rockets”, the movement said in a statement, adding that it was “a response to the attacks of the enemy against (…) southern villages and civilian houses”.
According to the IDF, around 40 rockets were fired from Lebanese territory. “Some of them were intercepted” while the others fell on open spaces. No injuries have yet been reported.
Two explosive drones intercepted
The Israeli army also claimed on its X account that its Iron Dome defense system had “successfully intercepted” two Hezbollah explosive drones earlier in the evening.
During the day, the official Lebanese news agency ANI reported shelling and strikes by Israel on several Lebanese border villages and, since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestinian Hamas on October 7, daily exchanges of fire pit the Israeli army against Lebanese Hezbollah, which claims to support the Palestinian Islamist movement.
At least 363 people have been killed in Lebanon, mainly Hezbollah fighters, but also at least 70 civilians, in cross-border violence, according to an AFP count. In northern Israel, ten soldiers and eight civilians were killed according to the army.
Friday’s Hezbollah rocket attacks come as Iran threatens to “punish” Israel in response to an April 1 strike that destroyed its consulate in Damascus. Sixteen people, including two generals of the Revolutionary Guards, died in this strike, according to a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
Threats of attack against Israel were deemed “credible” and “real” on Friday by a White House spokesperson and the United States announced the sending of reinforcements to the region. “If Iran carries out an attack from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned earlier this week.