Jerusalem:

The Israeli army on Monday said air raid sirens were activated across central Israel, including the commercial hub of Tel Aviv, as projectiles were fired across the border from Lebanon.

“Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central Israel due to projectiles fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” the army said in a statement.

The police said they had deployed officers to locate and secure any potential impact sites “to ensure public safety”.

In a later statement, the military said that “several interception attempts were made toward a number of projectiles that crossed from Lebanon”.

It did not specify whether any of the projectiles had breached the country’s air defences.

The barrage comes just a day after a Hezbollah drone attack killed four soldiers in the deadliest attack on Israel since the war in Lebanon began.

Israel and Hezbollah have been at war since Israel intensified its strikes on Lebanon on September 23 and sent ground troops across the border a week later.

Israel has vowed to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by nearly a year of Hezbollah rocket fire. Hezbollah says the rocket fire is in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas.

Israel’s air defences, including the Iron Dome system, have so far intercepted most of the projectiles, with a few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Beirut:

Hezbollah said it launched rockets at northern Israel Thursday “in response” to a deadly Israeli strike in south Lebanon — the group’s first attack after Israel killed a top commander earlier this week.

The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it “launched dozens of Katyusha rockets… in response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on… (the southern village of Shama) that killed a number of civilians”.

The Israeli military said that shortly after the rocket fire, the air force “struck the Hezbollah launcher from which the projectiles were launched”.

Earlier Thursday, the Lebanese health ministry said four Syrians were killed in an Israeli strike on the south, where Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since the Gaza war began in October.

“The health ministry announces… four Syrian nationals were martyred” in an “Israeli strike” on the southern village of Shama, it said in a statement.

The ministry said the toll might rise once DNA tests had been carried out.

The strike also wounded five Lebanese nationals, it added.

Emergency services told AFP that the dead were farmer workers and part of the same family.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the site of the strike, which heavily damaged two nearby buildings and burnt a vehicle to a crisp, a photographer contributing to AFP reported.

The attack was Hezbollah’s first since an Israeli air strike killed its top commander Fuad Shukr on Tuesday evening, with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying operations would resume on Friday morning.

Nasrallah warned his group was bound to respond to the killing of Shukr.

His death was followed hours later Wednesday, by the killing of Hezbollah ally Hamas’s chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran, which Iran and Hamas have blamed on Israel. Israel has declined to comment on his killing.

The violence since October has killed at least 542 people on the Lebanese side, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

At least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, according to army figures. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)