First responders and Israeli security forces gather amid debris and charred vehicles in Kiryat Bialik in the Haifa district of Israel, following a reported strike by Lebanon’s Hezbollah on September 22, 2024. Agence France-Presse
BEIRUT — Hezbollah said its militants targeted military production facilities and an air base in northern Israel on Sunday after Israeli strikes on south Lebanon that the military said targeted rocket launchers.
The Iran-backed Lebanese group said in a statement that the rocket fire at the area of the northern Israeli city of Haifa was part of its response to attacks this week blamed on Israel.
“In an initial response” to the explosions of pagers and two-way radios on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah “bombed the Rafael military industry complexes” in northern Israel with “dozens” of Katyusha, Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets, the group said.
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Hezbollah also said it targeted the “Ramat David base and airport”, around 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the border, twice overnight with “dozens” of Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets “in response to the repeated Israeli attacks that targeted different Lebanese regions and killed many civilians”.
The Ramat David site is among the deepest inside Israeli territory that the group has said it has targeted in nearly a year of cross-border exchanges.
The air base and the Rafael site both appeared in drone footage Hezbollah released in recent months, in videos seen as a potential bank of targets for the group in case of widening conflict.
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Hezbollah began cross-border attacks in support of ally Hamas, whose October 7 attack on Israel started the Gaza war, but has generally said it has targeted positions near the border.
The Israeli army said more than 100 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Sunday morning, adding fire services were working to put out blazes sparked by falling munitions.
On Saturday, the Israeli army said it was “attacking widely in southern Lebanon following the identification of Hezbollah’s preparations to fire into Israeli territory”.
It had also said its aircraft “struck thousands of launcher barrels that were ready for immediate use to fire toward Israeli territory”.