Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has launched a series of rocket and drone strikes on northern part of the Israeli-occupied territories, sparking intense fires there.
Israeli authorities dispatched firefighting teams to the area to contain the flames, which spread on Monday due to hot and dry weather.
The Israeli military said it had deployed reinforcements to help firefighters extinguish the blazes.
It added that six reservist soldiers were injured as a result of smoke inhalation and taken to a hospital.
Meanwhile, Israeli media outlets reported that settlers in Kiryat Shmona were evacuated after the blazes engulfed the city.
Kiryat Shmona previously had a population of 24,000 settlers, but it was reduced to 4,000 following a surprise operation by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group eight months ago.
In a statement, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the premier held an assessment with security officials about the developments in northern area of the occupied lands and was updated about the firefighting efforts.
Naftali Bennett, a right-wing Israeli politician and former prime minister, criticized the Netanyahu cabinet’s handling of the fires.
“Places that were flourishing and beautiful have become cities of ruins,” he said in an X post, describing Hezbollah’s attacks as “heavy”.
The fires came amid intensifying skirmishes between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops in recent days.
The two sides have been exchanging deadly fire since early October, shortly after the occupying regime launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip following the historic Hamas operation.
Hezbollah has vowed to keep up its retaliatory operations as long as the Tel Aviv regime continues its brutal Gaza onslaught, which has so far killed at least 36,479 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 82,777 others.
Hezbollah fought off two Israeli wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, forcing a humiliating retreat upon the occupation’s military on both occasions.