Israel Defense Force jets struck a Hezbollah cell in southern Lebanon’s Tayr Harfa on Thursday afternoon, the military said, after multiple projectiles, including anti-tank missiles, were fired at northern Israel’s Metula from Lebanon.
Additionally, three Hezbollah sites in Yaroun, Yarine and Ayta ash-Shab and three buildings in Mays al-Jabal and Houla were targeted, according to an IDF statement.
There were no reports of injuries in the attacks from Lebanon, but damage to a building was reported in Metula.
Rocket warning sirens sounded throughout Thursday afternoon and evening in largely evacuated northern towns and cities including Kiryat Shmona, Ramot Naftali, Shlomi, Tel Hai, Beit Hillel, Kfar Yuval and Avivim, which also hosts a military base.
The IDF said fighter jets also struck a building used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon’s Kafr Kila on Thursday, after striking another building in Dhayra overnight Wednesday. The IDF added that it shelled the launch sites of rockets fired from Lebanon overnight toward the Upper Galilee’s Kibbutz Yiftah.
Since October, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
On Thursday morning, Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper reported a “large and unprecedented” deployment of armed Hezbollah members on the streets in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiya, a stronghold of the terror group.
The report said the terror group members were masked and checking the identities of individuals walking on the streets.
In addition to being dominated by Hezbollah, the neighborhood was home to Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri, killed in a January strike widely attributed to Israel.
Judicial officials in Lebanon said on Thursday an investigative judge had issued arrest warrants for two people on suspicion of giving information to Israel, including the digital mapping of a Beirut street where Arouri was killed.
The officials said that Fadi Sawwan, the investigative judge at the military tribunal, issued the arrest warrants earlier this week for the two Lebanese citizens weeks after they were detained while using sophisticated digital mapping equipment.
Speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, the officials said the two men had earlier mapped streets in different parts of Lebanon, including in Beirut’s southern suburbs that are home to the Hezbollah leadership. The men reportedly said they thought they were sending the information to a US-based virtual tourism company.
The officials said that the two suspects had mapped the street on which Arouri was killed nearly two weeks before the hit.
The two were said to be in custody, charged with spying for a foreign country and obtaining information that should remain secret because of national security, and facing life sentences.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacres, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, mostly civilians.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, triggering Hezbollah’s ongoing aggression on the northern front. So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in seven civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of ten IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.
Hezbollah has named 244 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon, but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 42 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 30 civilians, three of whom were journalists, have been killed.
Israel has warned that it will no longer tolerate the presence of Hezbollah along the Lebanon frontier, where it could attempt to carry out an attack similar to the massacre committed by Hamas in the south on October 7.
Agencies contributed to this report.