The Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has used for the first time a new rocket with a heavy warhead to strike an Israeli military position in the northern sector of the 1948-occupied territories.
Hezbollah said in a brief statement on Friday that it had struck and destroyed parts of the Rweisat al-Alam outpost in the occupied Kfar Chouba hills with a Wabel rocket.
The statement added that the rocket, produced by the group in Lebanon, caused a fire inside the targeted Israeli military outpost.
Hezbollah also said its fighters fired a salvo of rockets on the Israeli settlement of Abirim for the first time since fighting along the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied lands began in early October.
The group stated that the operations came in support of Palestinians in Gaza and retaliation for Israeli airstrikes the night before on south Lebanon that killed several Hezbollah members and wounded civilians.
Israeli strikes on south Lebanon on Thursday have reportedly killed Habib Maatouk, a field commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces. The strikes hit the villages of Safad El Battikh and Jmaijmeh, resulting in the injury of more than a dozen civilians.
Meanwhile, another Hezbollah member Ali Muhanna from the town of Jbal El Botm in southern Lebanon was also killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday. Israeli media outlets claimed that Muhanna “was a member of Hezbollah’s engineering unit in the Qana area, and played a role in planning and executing various operations against Israel.”
Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging deadly fire since early October last year, shortly after the regime launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip following a surprise operation by Hamas.
The Lebanese resistance movement has vowed to keep up its retaliatory attacks as long as the Israeli regime continues its Gaza war, which has so far killed at least 38,848 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Hezbollah officials have repeatedly said they do not want a war with Israel while stressing that they are prepared in case it occurs.
Two Israeli wars waged against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 were met with strong resistance from Hezbollah, resulting in the retreat of the regime in both conflicts.