BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israeli forces traded cross-border attacks, both sides said early Sunday, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported three rescuers killed in an Israeli attack.
The Iran-backed Lebanese movement has exchanged near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during 11 months of the cross-border violence.
Hezbollah said it had bombarded the northern Israeli town of “Kiryat Shmona with a volley of Falaq rockets” early Sunday “in response to the enemy attacks... and particularly the attack” that killed the emergency workers in the Lebanese village of Froun.
On Saturday, Lebanon’s health ministry said three emergency responders were killed and two others wounded, one of them critically, in an Israeli strike on Froun.
The ministry said the attack had targeted “a Lebanese civil defense team that was putting out fires sparked by the recent Israeli strikes,” while the Israeli military said it had “eliminated terrorists” from the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement in Froun.
Lebanon’s civil defense agency said three of its employees were killed in “an Israeli strike that targeted a firefighting vehicle after they had finished a firefighting mission.”
Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack, saying in a statement that “this new aggression against Lebanon is a blatant violation of international laws... and human values.”
Separately on Sunday, Hezbollah said that its fighters had also fired rockets at the Israeli community of Shamir, near Kiryat Shmona.
Hezbollah usually says it targets military positions in northern Israel, while Israel has said it targets Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters in south and east Lebanon.
The Israeli military on Sunday morning announced it had carried out a series of air strikes on “Hezbollah military structures” and intercepted projectiles launched from Lebanon during the night.
Rescuers killed by Israeli fire
In Froun on Saturday, a military statement said Israeli forces “struck and eliminated” Amal members who “operated within a Hezbollah military structure.”
Hezbollah ally the Amal movement said two of its members were among the dead in Saturday’s strike. It said they were killed “while carrying out their humanitarian and national duty defending Lebanon and the south.”
The Lebanese health ministry statement condemned the “blatant Israeli attack that targeted a team from an official body of the Lebanese state.”
It added that the attack was “the second of its kind against an emergency team in less than 12 hours.”
Earlier Saturday, the ministry said two emergency personnel from the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee were wounded when “the Israeli enemy deliberately targeted” near a fire they were heading to extinguish in south Lebanon’s Qabrikha, causing their vehicle to swerve.
Several militant groups operate health centers and emergency response operations in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah had announced a string of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Saturday, including with Katyusha rockets and “explosives-laden drones,” some in a stated response to “Israeli enemy attacks” on south Lebanon.
The cross-border violence has killed some 614 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 138 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians.
A statement from Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said that “due to the (Israeli) aggression,” 27 emergency personnel and health workers have been killed and 94 others wounded since October.
Two hospitals and 21 health centers have been “targeted,” while 32 fire or ambulance vehicles have been “put out of service or partially damaged,” the statement said, urging an end to the “repeated and deliberate targeting of health workers and civilians.”
