Israeli attack carried out by ‘drone with missiles’: report (document)
Beirut:
An Israeli attack on Nabatyeh in southern Lebanon killed a Hezbollah commander, two other fighters and seven civilians, security sources said on Thursday, adding to the death toll from an attack a day earlier.
The deaths brought to 10 the total number of civilians killed in Wednesday’s Israeli attacks, the highest death toll since cross-border hostilities began in October and further fueling fears of a wider conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Security sources said Hezbollah commander Ali al-Debs had been targeted and wounded in a February 8 Israeli drone attack on the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh. The source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Two other Hezbollah militants who lived with Debs on the first floor of the building were also killed in Wednesday’s attack on the building in the city, as well as “seven civilians from the same family” on the first floor of the building, the source added. .
Hezbollah announced on Thursday that three militants, including Debs, had been killed but did not specify where they died. Two members were allegedly killed on Wednesday.
The Israeli army said on Wednesday that a soldier was killed in an unclaimed rocket fired from Lebanon, where Israeli warplanes carried out attacks.
The official state news agency had previously identified the five dead in Nabatiya as Hussein Barjawi, his two daughters, sister and grandson. His wife and niece were also killed.
Emergency workers rescued a boy from the rubble, while another relative and at least six others were taken to hospital.
The agency said the Israeli attack was carried out by a “drone armed with missiles.”
Death toll rises
An AFP photographer said the ground and first floors of the three-storey residential building were hit, with fragments of furniture scattered among the rubble.
Also on Wednesday, the NNA said Israeli warplanes struck a house in Sawwaneh, southern Lebanon, killing three members of the same family – a Syrian woman and her 2-year-old child, as well as their 13-year-old stepson.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been engaged in almost daily cross-border fighting since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October.
There are growing fears of another full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which last clashed in 2006.
The Shiite Muslim group claimed on Thursday it had attacked Israeli “spy equipment” and a military camp, while the Israeli military said fighter jets struck “dozens” of Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will speak on Friday, his second such speech this week.
Cross-border violence has killed at least 259 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 40 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
According to the Israeli military, 10 Israeli soldiers and 6 civilians were killed.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
