Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed force, has fired at least 150 rockets in northern Israel. Two civilians were killed and others injured.
Paramedics reported that a man and woman in their 40s died after being fatally injured by shrapnel. They were in the border city of Kiryat-Shmona. A couple was walking their dog in a wooded area.
Hezbollah claimed it had targeted Israeli troops in Kiryat Shmona. Most residents of the town have fled after a year-long cross-border conflict.
Hezbollah has killed the first Israeli civilians since the conflict escalated a couple of weeks ago when Israel launched a fierce air campaign against the Iran-backed group, before invading the southern Lebanon.
The rocket fragments or rocket that hit Kiryat Shmona, Israel on Wednesday ignited several fires.
We could smell fires before we saw them. Three teams of firefighters tackled smoke plumes from a house in which a rocket had fallen.
Katy Krelshtein stared in disbelief on the other side of road. The house next door was her father’s.
When I asked her what she thought, she replied “I saw red.” “It has gone beyond fear – now it’s only anger.”
Since last year, rockets have been a regular occurrence in Kiryat Shmona. Many people there want their military to stop them.
As we arrived to begin filming, several more rocket alerts were received. Residents have only seconds to get to a shelter when they are so close to the border.
We watched as a large barrage of over 20 rockets and what looked like a’missile’ were intercepted in the skies above – part what the Israeli military claimed were 90 projectiles that were launched from Lebanon within an eight-minute period.
On Wednesday, we visited another town in the west where the border runs straight down the hill that overlooks it. The burned patches of forest show where artillery or rockets have been fired.
The sound of gunfire echoing around empty houses echoed in the streets below.
Shelley Barkan is one of the very few people who have stayed in the area. She said that there are sometimes eight or nine alerts for rockets every day.
She said, “I have pieces of rockets in the garden.” “Their goal is to murder us and kill us. To send Israel to sea. And our goal is to defend ourselves.”
She showed us where she prepares food for local soldiers.
While we were there we heard a barrage rockets being fired from Lebanon towards Israeli towns further down south.
Minutes later, rockets hit the coastal city Haifa and injured five more people, including a teenager.
Israel has launched an offensive after nearly a year of border fighting sparked off by the war in Gaza. It says it wants to ensure that tens and thousands of residents of Israeli borders who were displaced by Hezbollah missile, rocket and drone attacks can return safely.
The hostilities escalated steadily after Hezbollah started firing rockets at northern Israel to support Palestinians on 8th October 2023. This was the day following Hamas’s deadly assault on southern Israel.
The military has stated that the goal of the ground invasion, which began 9 days ago, is the destruction of Hezbollah’s infrastructure along the border, which it claims poses an immediate threat to Israeli communities.
On Wednesday, there were reports of intense fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah in several southern Lebanese regions.
Hezbollah claimed that its fighters had pushed Israeli troops back towards the western village Labbouneh. They also said they had attacked other Israeli troops inside the eastern village Maroun al-Ras and shelled troops in the vicinity of Mays al-Jabal which is near Kiryat Smona.
Israeli military said that its troops and aircraft destroyed more than 100 Hezbollah target sites in southern Lebanon during the past day.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said that at least four people were killed and ten injured in an Israeli airstrike on the village Wardaniyeh to the north-east from the coastal city Sidon.
The National News Agency, a state-run news agency, reported that the strike had hit a hotel where displaced families were staying.
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