After a relatively calm Sunday morning, hostilities resumed in southern Lebanon with renewed artillery exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel. Israeli bombardments intermittently targeted the outskirts of Kfarhamam, Rachaya al-Foukhar, Markaba, Aita al-Shaab, Kfarchouba, and Blida, where a Hezbollah fighter was killed.
According to the Israeli Army’s spokesman, Avichay Adraee, Israeli aircraft “targeted a cell of Hezbollah terrorists spotted leaving a military building in Blida, as well as two other buildings in the area.”
Hezbollah instigated the conflict by shelling “a gathering of soldiers in the vicinity of the Ramim barracks and then the Zabqin barracks in the Shebaa Farms with two Falaq 1 missiles, which hit their target directly,” stated the pro-Iranian group. During the day, Hezbollah targeted many Israeli military positions.
Israeli media reported that the group targeted Israeli military positions in Kiryat Shmona. In the early afternoon, several rockets landed in open areas of the kibbutz in northern Israel. Subsequently, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona reportedly urged residents to evacuate the town immediately due to the heightened intensity of Hezbollah’s military activities.
Later during the day, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant renewed his threats against Lebanon, saying that his country “will continue to attack in Lebanon regardless of what happens in Gaza.”
A possible truce in the fighting with Hamas in the Gaza Strip would not affect Israel’s “objective” of pushing Hezbollah back from its northern border, he declared.
At a time when talks are intensifying for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel continues to “strengthen” its military capabilities on its border with Lebanon, Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the army’s northern command in Safed, where a soldier was killed this month by a rocket fired from Lebanon.
“I came here to see how we are increasing our firepower and how ready we are to act against Hezbollah anywhere and with ever-increasing intensity,” he said, according to a video released by his services. “If people think that if there is an agreement to release hostages in the south (in Gaza, ed.), it will make things easier here (in the north), they are wrong. We’re going to keep firing, regardless of what happens in the south, until we achieve our goal,” he added. “That goal is simple: for Hizbullah to withdraw to where it belongs, whether by agreement or by force,” he asserted.
