Hezbollah did not comment on Israeli claims that weapons were hidden in houses, but the group said in a statement that it responded to “aggression by enemies of Israel” by firing rockets at three Israeli military bases in northern Israel and a weapons manufacturing facility in the coastal town of Zbulun, north of the port city of Haifa.
The Israel Defense Forces said at least 125 projectiles, an unknown number of which were launched from Lebanon, landed in the Lower and Upper Galilee regions, the Carmel, Hamakim and Hamifrat areas near the coast, and the occupied Golan Heights.
In Givat Abni, in the Lower Galilee region, a house was badly damaged by a rocket attack.
Resident David Itzhak told the BBC that he, his wife and their six-year-old daughter were safe because they had managed to get behind the sturdy door of their home’s safe room seconds before warning sirens sounded.
“There is a metre between life and death,” he said.
Israeli ambulances said they treated a 59-year-old man in Lower Galilee who was injured in the lower body by shrapnel, while another man was injured while rushing to a shelter.
On Sunday, Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets and drones across the border, and Israeli warplanes struck hundreds of targets in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah remains defiant despite a series of serious setbacks in the past week.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, 39 people were killed and thousands more wounded when Hezbollah detonated thousands of phasers and walkie-talkies. And on Friday, Hezbollah said at least 16 of its elite Radwan forces, including a top commander, were among 45 killed in Israeli airstrikes south of Beirut.
At Sunday’s funeral, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said the group would not back down.
“We have entered a new phase,” he said, adding, “The title is the never-ending battle of liquidation.”
