Beirut:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Sunday said it fired Katyusha rockets at northern Israel in response to an overnight Israeli strike that, according to state media, hit a weapons depot and wounded six people.

Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah said it targeted northern Israel’s Dafna area with Katyusha rockets “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks that targeted civilians in the town of Adloun, injuring several of them”.

This comes after the Israeli military said its air force “struck two Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in southern Lebanon, containing rockets and additional weaponry”.

Late on Saturday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said “the Israeli enemy launched a raid” on the town of Adloun, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border with Israel, later saying the target was “an ammunition depot”.

“Six civilians sustained moderate injuries,” the NNA said on Sunday, revising the figure up from three the night before.

Rockets were still exploding about an hour after the strike was first reported, the NNA said, with videos circulating online showing several large explosions in Adloun.

“Shrapnel from the explosions flew to surrounding villages,” the NNA said.

Hezbollah on Sunday said in separate statements that three of its fighters were killed. 

Earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah and its Palestinian ally Hamas had fired rocket salvos and explosive-laden drones at Israeli positions.

Hezbollah said it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” towards northern Israel “in response” to a strike blamed on Israel that injured civilians.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said they also fired a rocket salvo from south Lebanon towards an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee.

The violence since October has killed at least 518 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. Most of the dead have been fighters, but they have included at least 104 civilians.

On the Israeli side, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

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Cairo:

A field commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces was killed in an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, two security sources said on Thursday, the latest senior member of the group to be killed in months of tit-for-tat fighting with Israel.

Habib Maatouk had replaced another commander in the elite unit who was killed earlier this year in an Israeli strike, the security sources said.

Maatouk was killed in one of several strikes on the neighbouring border villages of Safad El Batikh and Jmaijmeh, the sources said.

After the strikes, 18 wounded people arrived in nearby Tebnin government hospital, two in critical condition, hospital director Mohammed Hamadi told Reuters.

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since Hezbollah announced a “support front” with Palestinians shortly after its ally Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on Oct. 7, triggering Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

The fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 100 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to a Reuters tally, and led to levels of destruction in Lebanese border towns and villages not seen since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

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Coded messages, landline phones, and pagers: following the killing of senior commanders in targeted Israeli airstrikes, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, has been using some low-tech strategies to try to evade its foe’s sophisticated surveillance technology, informed sources said.

The sides have been trading fire since Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, attacked Israel in October last year, triggering the ongoing war. While the fighting on Lebanon’s southern border has remained relatively contained, stepped-up attacks in recent weeks have intensified concern that it could spiral into a full-scale war.

Tens of thousands of people have fled both sides of the border. Israeli strikes have killed more than 330 Hezbollah fighters and around 90 civilians in Lebanon.

Israel says attacks from Lebanon have killed 21 soldiers and 10 civilians.

As domestic pressure builds in Israel over Hezbollah’s barrages, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has highlighted its ability to hit the group’s operatives across the border.

Electronic surveillance technology plays a vital role in these strikes. The IDF has said it has security cameras and remote sensing systems trained on areas where Hezbollah operates, and it regularly sends surveillance drones over the border to spy on its adversary.

Israel’s electronic eavesdropping is also widely regarded as among the world’s most sophisticated.

Hezbollah has learned from its losses and adapted its tactics in response, six sources familiar with the group’s operations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.

Cell phones, which can be used to track a user’s location, have been banned from the battlefield in favour of more old-fashioned communication means, including pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person, two of the sources said.

Hezbollah has also been using a private, fixed-line telecommunications network dating back to the early 2000s, three sources said.

Code words

In case conversations are overheard, code words are used for weapons and meeting sites, according to another source familiar with the group’s logistics. These are updated nearly daily and delivered to units via couriers, the source said. “We’re facing a battle in which information and technology are essential parts,” said Qassem Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah. “But when you face certain technological advances, you need to go back to the old methods… whatever method allows you to circumvent the technology.”

Hezbollah’s media office said it had no comment on the sources’ assertions.

Security experts say some low-tech countermeasures can be quite effective against high-tech spying. One of the ways that al-Qaeda’s late leader, Osama bin Laden, evaded capture for nearly a decade was by disconnecting from the Internet and phone services, and using couriers instead.

“The simple act of using a VPN (virtual private network), or better yet, not using a cell phone at all, can make it much harder to find and fix a target,” said Emily Harding, a former CIA analyst now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Hezbollah and Lebanese security officials believe Israel has also been tapping local informants as it zeroes in on targets.

Lebanon’s economic crisis and rivalries between political factions have created opportunities for Israeli recruiters, but not all informants realise who they are speaking with, three sources said.

On November 22, a woman from south Lebanon received a call on her cell phone from a person claiming to be a local official, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident. Speaking in flawless Arabic, the caller asked whether the family was home, the sources said. No, the woman replied, explaining they had travelled to eastern Lebanon. Minutes later, a missile slammed into the woman’s home in the village of Beit Yahoun, killing five Hezbollah fighters including Abbas Raad, the son of a senior Hezbollah lawmaker and a Radwan member, the sources said.

Hezbollah believes Israel had tracked the fighters to the location and placed the call to confirm whether there were civilians present before launching the strike, they said without disclosing further details.

Within weeks, Hezbollah was publicly warning supporters via the affiliated Al-Nour radio station not to trust cold callers claiming to be local officials or aid workers, saying Israelis were impersonating them to identify houses being used by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah also suspected that Israel was targeting its fighters by tracking their cell phones and monitoring video feeds from security cameras installed on buildings in border communities, two sources familiar with the group’s thinking and a Lebanese intelligence official said.

On December 28, Hezbollah urged southern residents in a statement distributed via its Telegram channel to disconnect any security cameras they own from the Internet.

By early February, another directive had been issued to Hezbollah’s fighters: no mobile phones anywhere near the battlefield. “Today, if anyone is found with their phone on the front, he is kicked out of Hezbollah,” said a senior Lebanese source familiar with the group’s operations.

Even in Beirut, senior Hezbollah politicians avoid bringing phones with them to meetings, two other sources said.

Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based security consultant who has written a history of Hezbollah, said the group’s “awareness and wariness” of security breaches was at an all-time high. “Hezbollah has had to tighten up its security far more than it needed to do in earlier conflicts,” he said. However, Israel retains a technological advantage, Mr. Blanford said.

Tehran:

Iran’s president-elect Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday reaffirmed the Islamic republic’s support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and condemned Israel’s actions against Palestinians.

The statement, issued to Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah on the IRNA official news agency, was one of the first foreign policy comments from Pezeshkian since his victory in Friday’s presidential election runoff.

Tehran provides financial and military support to Hezbollah, which was created at the initiative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after arch-foe Israel overran Beirut in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war.

In a reference to Hezbollah and allied groups, Pezeshkian said: “The support of the resistance is rooted in the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

He said he was confident the “resistance movement” would stop its arch-foe Israel’s “warmongering and criminal policies” in Gaza, where Israel has for nine months been at war with Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally, Hamas.

Since the war in Gaza began, Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire over Lebanon’s border, triggering global alarm about the potential for all-out war as fighting escalates.

Earlier Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said Tehran “will not hesitate to support the Lebanese nation” and Israel “must be aware of the consequences of any adventurous action in the region, especially towards Lebanon.”

Reformist Pezeshkian defeated ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator, in the election which was brought forward after the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.

After the vote, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the election result was a “clear message of demand for change and opposition” from the Iranian people.

On Saturday Nasrallah congratulated Pezeshkian on his election victory and emphasised Tehran’s role as a “strong” supporter of regional “resistance” groups.

The Shiite Muslim movement is a key part of the Axis of Resistance — an alliance of pro-Iran armed movements that oppose Israel and the United States.

The alliance also includes Yemen’s Huthi rebels and fighters in Iraq, as well as Hamas.

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Beirut, Lebanon:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Sunday it launched its “largest” air operation, sending explosive drones at a mountaintop Israeli military intelligence base in the annexed Golan Heights.

It is the latest incident among escalating cross-border exchanges of fire that have triggered global alarm.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Hamas ally, has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Announcing “the largest operation” carried out by its aerial forces, Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters sent “multiple, successive squadrons of drones to target the reconnaissance centre” on Mount Hermon.

The Israeli military said an explosive drone “fell in an open area in the Mount Hermon area” but there were “no injuries”.

Attacks as well as rhetoric have escalated in recent weeks, spurring fears of an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah which last went to war in 2006.

The Lebanese movement said the drone attack was part of its “response” to the killing of an operative in a strike Saturday deep into east Lebanon around 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the border.

The Mount Hermon attack targeted intelligence systems, “destroying them and starting a major fire”, Hezbollah said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops on Mount Hermon earlier on Sunday, his office said.

In two additional statements, the military said its air defences “successfully intercepted” several “aerial targets” that crossed from Lebanon after sirens sounded in the Golan Heights area.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognised by the international community.

The Israeli strike on Saturday killed “a key operative in Hezbollah’s Aerial Defence Unit”, the military has said.

Throughout Sunday, Hezbollah announced four more attacks on Israeli military sites across the border with barrages of rockets as well as some guided missiles. Israeli authorities reported four wounded.

Gallant, in a video from Mount Hermon, said that “even if there is a ceasefire” in Gaza, “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah.

The cross-border violence has killed at least 497 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to the authorities.

Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from the border areas in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

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Beirut, Lebanon:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions on Thursday as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old war raging in Gaza.

The Iran-backed operative group said its latest attack, which followed the launch of over 100 rockets the previous day, came in response to Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in south Lebanon.

Israel did not report any deaths in its northern border area, where most communities have been evacuated, but quickly said it had responded with strikes on targets in southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian group Hamas, have exchanged near daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, stoking fears the clashes could escalate into all-out war.

UN chief Antonio Guterres is “very worried about the escalation of the exchange of fire”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday, warning of the risk to the wider Middle East “if we were to find ourselves in a full-fledged conflict”.

Hezbollah and Hamas are part of an Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” against Israel and the United States, a regional alliance that also includes Yemen’s Huthi rebels and groups in Iraq and Syria.

The Israeli military said Thursday its forces were “striking launch posts in southern Lebanon” after “numerous projectiles and suspicious aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory”.

It said that most were intercepted by air defence systems but that “fires broke out in a number of areas in northern Israel” following the attacks.

Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Naameh Nasser, near the Lebanese coastal town of Tyre.

A source close to the group described him as the “Hezbollah commander responsible for one of three sectors in south Lebanon”. Another border sector chief was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

Hezbollah said that “as part of the response to the… assassination carried out by the enemy” it had fired “more than 200 rockets” and “a squadron of explosive drones” at Israeli bases.

Air raid sirens blared across northern Israel in the morning, and an AFP correspondent witnessed rockets crossing the frontier that were intercepted.

Heavy battles rock Gaza

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,011 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The Israel-Hezbollah border clashes have killed at least 496 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

Israeli authorities say at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on their side of the UN-patrolled border.

The Gaza war at the heart of the regional tensions has meanwhile raged on, and gun battles, air strikes and artillery shelling rocked Gaza City for an eight day on Thursday.

Israeli troops over the past day had “destroyed tunnel routes in the area and eliminated dozens of terrorists in close-quarters combat with tank fire, and in aerial strikes,” said the military.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least five people were killed in a strike that hit a Gaza City school. 

Fears of renewed heavy fighting have also surged in Gaza’s southern areas near Khan Yunis and Rafah after the military on Monday issued a sweeping evacuation order that the UN said impacted 250,000 people.

Witnesses reported air strikes and intense artillery shelling in western Rafah on Thursday.

Efforts towards truce

Israel has faced an international outcry over the soaring civilian death toll, punishing siege and mass destruction in Gaza.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, this week again called for an end to the “maelstrom of human misery”.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages.

US President Joe Biden, under growing domestic pressure over Washington’s support for Israel, in late May outlined a roadmap for a six-week ceasefire and exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

There has been little progress since, but Hamas said Wednesday it was communicating with officials in Qatar and Egypt as well as Turkey with an eye to ending the conflict.

Hamas said its Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh had “made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement”.

Netanyahu’s office and the Mossad intelligence service said “Israel is evaluating the (Hamas) remarks and will convey its reply to the mediators”.

The main stumbling block so far has centred on Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting — a demand Netanyahu and his right-wing nationalist government allies strongly reject.

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Paris:

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday urged Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent a “conflagration” between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, during a telephone call between the two leaders.

Macron “reiterated his serious concern over a deepening of tensions between Hezbollah and Israel… and underscored the absolute need to prevent a conflagration that would harm the interests of Lebanon as well as Israel,” the French presidency said in a statement.

He also insisted on the “urgency for all parties to move rapidly toward a diplomatic solution” to end the conflict sparked by the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants in Gaza.

“The two leaders discussed the diplomatic efforts underway towards this,” the Elysee Palace said, ahead of a visit by the US envoy for the conflict, Amos Hochstein, to Paris on Wednesday.

Macron also called on Netanyahu to refrain from any “new operation” in Gaza near Rafah or Khan Yunis, “which would only aggravate the human toll and a humanitarian situation that is already catastrophic”, the Elysee said.

The Israeli army on Monday ordered the evacuation of most areas east of Khan Yunis and Rafah along the Egyptian border.

It did not explicitly announce a military operation, but such orders have typically preceded major offensives.

The announcement sparked a mass exodus of Palestinians from parts of southern Gaza on Tuesday as Israeli forces launched deadly strikes and clashed with militants.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive aimed at eradicating the Palestinian militants in Gaza has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

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Beirut:

Hezbollah said it fired “dozens” of rockets Thursday at a military base in northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Lebanon, announcing four of its fighters had been killed.

Fears of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah have risen in recent weeks as threats have intensified between the sides, which have traded regular cross-border fire since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas ally Hezbollah said that “in response to the enemy attacks that targeted the city of Nabatiyeh and village of Sohmor”, its fighters bombed “the main air and missile defence base of the (Israeli) northern area command… with dozens of Katyusha rockets”.

It said in separate statements that four of its fighters, one from eastern Lebanon’s Sohmor, had been killed, and claimed two other attacks on Israeli troops and positions, including one with drones.

The Israeli military said in a statement that “approximately 35 launches were identified crossing from Lebanon”.

Air defences “successfully intercepted most of the launches. No injuries were reported,” it added.

It said air strikes “eliminated” three Hezbollah operatives, one in the Sohmor area and two in the country’s south.

The military also said that “two UAVs (drones) that were identified crossing from Lebanon fell” in northern Israel, reporting no injuries.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Israeli attacks in several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday, and said a strike a day earlier in Nabatiyeh wounded “more than 20” people when a two-storey building was targeted.

Fears have grown the Gaza war could become a regional conflagration if the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which so far has been largely limited to the border area, expands.

France’s foreign ministry said Thursday that Paris was “extremely concerned” about the fighting, calling “all sides to exercise the greatest restraint”.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to Washington on Wednesday that his country did not want war in Lebanon, but could send it back to the “Stone Age” if diplomacy failed.

Amid Western diplomatic efforts to dial down tensions in recent months, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Tuesday visited Beirut and cautioned that “miscalculation” could trigger all-out war, also urging “extreme restraint”.

The violence has killed 485 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 94 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to authorities.

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Washington:

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on a visit to Washington that his country does not want war in Lebanon but was ready to inflict “massive damage” on Hezbollah if diplomacy fails.

“We do not want war, but we are preparing for every scenario,” Gallant told reporters during the visit that ended Wednesday.

“Hezbollah understands very well that we can inflict massive damage in Lebanon if a war is launched,” he said.

Tensions have been rising, with growing skirmishes along the border between Israel and the Iranian-backed militia, since the October 7 attack by Hamas that prompted a relentless Israeli retaliatory campaign in Gaza.

Gallant said that Israel has killed more than 400 Hezbollah “terrorists” in recent months.

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Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah speaks during a televised address at a memorial service for Taleb Abdallah, a senior field commander in the group who was killed on June 11 alongside three other Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli strike on the south Lebanon village of Jouaiyya, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Lebanon’s Hezbollah has new weapons and intelligence capabilities that could help it target more critical positions deeper inside Israel in case of an all-out war, the militant group’s leader warned on June 20.

Hassan Nasrallah’s comments came as the monthslong cross-border conflict simmering between Hezbollah and Israel appears to be reaching a boiling point and a day after a top U.S. envoy met Lebanese officials in his latest attempt to ease tensions.

Also read: Hezbollah | The party of God

“We now have new weapons. But I won’t say what they are,” he said in a televised address commemorating a top Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon last week. “When the decision is made, they will be seen on the front lines.”

Hezbollah has used locally made explosive drones for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October, as well as surface-to-air missiles against Israeli jets.

Nasrallah said in 2021 that Hezbollah has 100,000 fighters but now he claimed the number is much higher, without elaborating. He also said he has rejected offers from allied countries and militias in the region that could add tens of thousands to his ranks.

A nearly 10-minute-long video allegedly filmed by a Hezbollah surveillance drone and released Tuesday shows parts of Haifa — a city far from the Israel-Lebanon border. Nasrallah in his speech Wednesday said Hezbollah has much more footage — an apparent threat it could reach sites deep in Israel.

Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, visited Israeli air-defense soldiers near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday, saying Israel was aware of Hezbollah’s capabilities demonstrated in the video and has solutions for these threats.

“The enemy only knows a small part of our capabilities and will see them at the needed time,” he said.

Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, has been exchanging strikes with Israel almost daily since the war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, with the aim to pull Israeli forces away from the embattled Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah’s attacks escalated after Israel expanded its offensive last month into the southern Gaza city of Rafah and spiked further last week after an Israeli strike killed high-ranking Hezbollah commander Taleb Sami Abdullah, the most senior militant killed so far during the Israel-Hamas war.

Also Tuesday, the Israeli army said it has “approved and validated” plans for an offensive in Lebanon, although the decision to actually launch such an operation would have to come from the country’s political leadership.

The warnings by both sides followed a visit by President Joe Biden’s senior adviser Amos Hochstein, who this week met with officials in Lebanon and Israel in his latest attempt to deescalate tensions. Hochstein told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that it was a “very serious situation” and that a diplomatic solution to prevent a larger war was “urgent.”

Nasrallah said a wider war with Lebanon would have regional implications and that Hezbollah would attack any other country in the region backing Israel, citing Cyprus, which has hosted Israeli forces for training exercises.

Only a cease-fire in Gaza would halt the Lebanon-Israel border fighting or the attacks on Western and Israel-linked targets from Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Iraqi militias allied with Hezbollah.

Israel views Hezbollah as its most direct threat, and the two fought a 34-day war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Hebollah’s military capabilities have significantly grown since then, and the United States and Israel estimate the group, along with other Lebanese militant factions, has about 150,000 missiles and rockets. Hezbollah also has been working on precision-guided missiles.

Hezbollah said at least four of its fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday as Hochstein returned to Israel for a new round of meetings there.

Lebanese state media reported the strikes along the border and near the coastal city of Tyre, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) away. The Israeli military said two Hezbollah launches damaged several vehicles in northern Israel.

Kamel Mohanna, the head of the Amel Association, an NGO providing health services in different areas of Lebanon, said the association health center in the town of Khiam was hit and damaged by the Israeli shelling.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah and other militants, but also over 80 civilians and non-combatants. In northern Israel, 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed by strikes launched from Lebanon.