ISRAEL – An Israeli strike has killed at least 10 people in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said, prompting Hezbollah to launch a barrage of retaliatory rockets at Israel. All of those killed in Lebanon were Syrian nationals. A woman and her two children are among the dead, according to the ministry.

The strike also wounded at least five. They include three Syrians, one Sudanese and one Lebanese, the ministry said. Two of the Syrians are in critical condition and undergoing surgery at a nearby hospital. Israel’s military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Nabatiyeh overnight.

The death toll from the strike is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Israel launched its war on Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7 that killed around 1,200 people. Mohamed, 14, was about to go to sleep when he saw a missile hit a warehouse nearby. He told CNN that rescuers worked through the night to retrieve the dead bodies from under the rubble, where they found a decapitated body and a severed arm.

Pointing to the sky buzzing with the sound of an unseen drone, Mohamed said: “They are always flying over here 24/7, sometimes they fly so low you can see them. Referring to the victims, who are believed to all be Syrian migrants, Haitham, a Syrian national guard at a nearby company, said: “They escaped one war and got killed in another. Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon launched a volley of rockets towards Ayelet Hashahar in northern Israel in response to the strike, the group said in a statement. Israel’s military confirmed that sirens had sounded in Ayelet Hashahar after “approximately 55 projectiles” crossed from Lebanon. “No injuries were reported,” the Israel Defence Forces said.

In a separate incident, the IDF said one of its soldiers was severely injured and another lightly wounded after a projectile from Lebanon fell in Misgav Am. Also on Saturday, a drone struck and killed a person on a motorcycle in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, according to Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging almost daily cross-border fire since Israel launched its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in 10 months. Tensions between Lebanon and Israel deepened further late last month when an Israeli strike on Lebanese capital Beirut killed the top military commander for Hezbollah, Fu’ad Shukr. Israel is widely believed to have assassinated Hamas’ political leader the next day in Tehran, Iran. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in that incident. (CNN)…[+]