Israel said it was striking dozens of targets in Lebanon on Saturday after three rockets were launched across the border in an exchange of fire that threatened a fragile truce between Israel and the Hizbollah militant group.
The cross-border exchange came less than a week after Israel ended a separate ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza by launching a series of air strikes that killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to local officials, and resumed ground operations in the shattered enclave.
Israel’s military said it had intercepted three projectiles launched from Lebanese territory early on Saturday, which set off air-raid sirens in Metula, a small community on the de facto border between Israel and Lebanon.
The salvo was the first time rockets had been fired towards Israel from Lebanon since the days immediately after the ceasefire took effect in November, pausing a year-long war between Israel and Hizbollah.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said several Israeli air strikes had hit the Jezzine district, some 30km from the border near Metula, as well as several other locations in southern Lebanon. It also reported artillery fire in a handful of other areas. There were no immediate reports of casualties in either Israel or Lebanon.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam of Lebanon warned that Saturday’s exchange of fire risked dragging the country back into a calamitous war with Israel, which the country wanted to avoid.
“All security and military measures must be taken to show that the state alone decides on matters of war and peace,” Salam said, adding a renewed plea to the UN to pressure Israel to fully withdraw from the country.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz said that Israel would hold Lebanon’s new government responsible for any launches from the country’s territory.
“Israel will not allow any harm to its citizens and sovereignty, and will act in every way to ensure the security of Israeli citizens and the northern communities,” they said.
Lebanon’s Armed Forces said it had discovered three primitive rocket launchers north of the Litani river — beyond the area in southern Lebanon from which Hizbollah was mandated to withdraw by the ceasefire — and dismantled them.
There was no immediate comment from Hizbollah, the militant group that historically controls southern Lebanon.
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned that “any further escalation of this volatile situation could have serious consequences for the region”.
Israel mounted a ferocious air and ground offensive against Hizbollah after the Iran-backed movement began firing towards Israel following Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack from Gaza.
More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 140 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed in the fighting, which also displaced more than 1mn people in Lebanon and 60,000 in Israel.
Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire that halted 13 months of fighting, Hizbollah agreed to move its weapons out of southern Lebanon, Israeli troops were to withdraw completely from southern Lebanon and the LAF would move in.
But Israeli troops have remained in five “strategic” positions inside southern Lebanon, insisting it was part of the deal. Each side has accused the other of failing to implement the deal in full, with Israel’s air force continuing to launch air and drone strikes on what it says are Hizbollah targets across Lebanon.
Lebanon’s government, not Hizbollah, is responsible for dismantling the militant group’s military infrastructure and seizing its weapons, a process that has been fraught at times with discord between Hizbollah and the LAF.
