A Hezbollah supporter holds a placard with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah next to the rubble of a completely destroyed building in Dahieh, a southern suburb controlled by Hezbollah, in Beirut, Lebanon, on Wednesday. Photo by Joao Relvas/EPA-EFE
Hezbollah fighters engaged in clashes with Israeli soldiers who advanced into two border towns in southern Lebanon, killing eight Israeli soldiers and wounding five others, Hezbollah and Israeli Army reported Wednesday.
The Israeli Army confirmed the deaths and injuries in Lebanon but did not specify the areas in which the casualties occurred. Advertisement
A Hezbollah statement said the group’s Islamic Resistance fighters clashed with “Israeli enemy soldiers who infiltrated” the border town of Maroun al-Ras, just a mile from the evacuated Israeli town of Avivim.
The statement reported several casualties among the Israeli soldiers and said that “the clashes are ongoing.”
The Hezbollah fighters also confronted an Israeli force that tried to infiltrate the village of Odaisseh on the Blue Line with Israel and forced it to retreat. The fighters also detonated an explosive charge that “killed and wounded all members of an Israeli force trying to approach the town of Yaroun.”
The Lebanese army confirmed in a statement that an Israeli force breached the Blue Line in Yaroun and Odaisseh and withdrew after a short time.
The border fighting came after Iran targeted Israel with 200 missiles on Tuesday evening in a major escalation that prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to vow retaliation and make Iran regret its move. Advertisement
The fighting also occurred less than a week after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah when Israeli aircraft bombed his party’s central headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where he was meeting with top commanders underground.
Israel has been relentlessly targeting Hezbollah’s strongholds in the capital’s southern suburbs and south Lebanon, as well as in the country’s eastern region during the past two weeks, staging blistering airstrikes and targeting the group’s commanders and senior figures. It also struck inside Beirut twice.
More than 1,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians, were killed and nearly 1 million forced to leave their villages and evacuate their homes to safer areas across the country.
The air attacks started after an unprecedented, highly sophisticated pager and walkie-talkie attacks that Israel carried out against Hezbollah members in mid-September, killing a dozen people and wounding nearly 3,000 others,
Israel’s decision to carry a ground incursion inside Lebanon was meant to destroy Hezbollah’s combat infrastructure and hunt down its fighters.
Hezbollah’s information officer, Mohamed Afif, said the border fighting today were “just the beginning.”
“Our forces and resistance fighters are in complete readiness to confront and resist the enemy,” Afif said during a first tour organized by Hezbollah to some 200 local and foreign journalists in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Advertisement
“I say to everyone that the resistance is fine, and the command-and-control system is fine,” he said.
He accused Israel of targeting buildings inhabited by civilians in the southern suburbs, emphasizing that they “do not include weapons at all.”
The Israeli strikes have resulted in high civilian casualties and huge material damage to properties, flattening dozens of buildings as well as destroying shops, cars and roads.
