Lebanon: Israel fires missile, Hezbollah responds
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel fired missiles on Thursday on targets in southern Lebanon with the militant Hezbollah group responding with a volley of rockets.
The exchange comes amid heightened tensions and as Israel escalates its military activities in the region.
The Lebanese army said Israel fired nine missiles on Thursday from the occupied Golan Heights that fell in different parts of south Lebanon. Hezbollah responded with a barrage of rockets. There were no reports of casualties.
The Israeli military said it was responding to two rockets launched earlier in the day from Lebanon toward northern Israel.
The exchange follows a missile attack a day earlier from Lebanon that struck near a northern Israeli border town causing a brushfire. Israel responded with artillery fire on southern Lebanon.
The escalation in violence comes a week after a senior Lebanese Hezbollah official was killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on the Syria-Lebanon border.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon known as UNIFIL said it is working with the LAAF to ascertain the facts.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces clashed for 34 days during a 2006 war that ended with a U.N.-brokered ceasefire.