Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila near the border on May 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched dozens of rockets at north Israel military positions on May 15 in retaliation for the killing of a member Israel said was a field commander.
Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
Hezbollah fighters on May 15 attacked “the Meron base with dozens of Katyusha rockets, heavy rockets and artillery shells” as well as targeting a barrack with “heavy rockets,” the group said.
The attacks were “part of the response to the assassination carried out by the Israeli enemy in the south” the previous day, it said.
Israel’s Army said sirens sounded in Meron on May 15 without providing further details.
On May 14 evening, Hezbollah said Israeli fire had killed its member Hussein Makki, who was identified as a field commander by a source close to the group.
The Israeli Army later confirmed it had launched the strike that killed Makki.
It described him as “a senior field commander” in Hezbollah responsible for planning and executing “numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and territory”.
“He previously served as the commander of Hezbollah’s forces in the coastal region,” the Army added.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency had reported two people killed in an “enemy drone strike that targeted a car on the Tyre-Al-Hush main road”.
But another source close to Hezbollah later told AFP that while Makki was killed, the other person was injured.
At least 412 people have been killed in Lebanon in more than seven months of cross-border violence, mostly militants but also including 79 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in areas on both sides of the border.
