Lebanon: State media claim Israel’s attack “targeted ammunition depot”

Official Lebanese media reported that an Israeli attack on a city deep in the south of the country on Saturday evening hit an ammunition depot, slightly injuring three people and setting off rockets.

The airstrike, about 30 kilometers from the border, came after Hezbollah, which controls much of southern Lebanon, and its Palestinian ally Hamas fired rockets and explosive-laden drones at Israeli positions.

“The attack on the town of Adloun targeted an ammunition depot,” the Lebanese news agency said. It had previously reported that the Israeli enemy had launched an attack on the area, with “rockets still exploding” and “three citizens slightly injured” in the explosions.

Since the Palestinian militia’s attack on southern Israel on October 7 triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has been engaging in almost daily cross-border shelling with Israeli forces in support of Hamas.

The NNA said traffic on the highway was disrupted in both directions and videos circulated online showing several large explosions in the coastal city.

“Shrapnel from the explosions flew into the surrounding villages,” the NNA said.

Earlier on Saturday, NNA said Syrian nationals, including children, were injured when an “enemy drone attacked an empty off-road vehicle” near their tent near the border.

Doctor Mouenes Kalakesh, the head of Marjayoun State Hospital, said a woman and her three children, two of them minors, were admitted to Burj al-Muluk with shrapnel injuries following the blast.

Among them was an 11-year-old boy in critical condition who had suffered shrapnel injuries and a head wound, Kalakesh told AFP.

– Hezbollah drones –

Hezbollah said it fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at Dafna, an area in northern Israel that the group said it had targeted for the first time, “in response to the attack on civilians.”

Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, also said they fired a salvo of rockets from southern Lebanon at an Israeli military position in the Upper Galilee “in response to the Zionist massacres of civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

Later on Saturday, Iran-backed Hezbollah said it had also launched “explosive-laden drones” targeting “artillery and rocket positions” and Israeli troops in the Golan Heights and Iron Dome platforms.

Before the drone attack, the Israeli army had stated that it had fired a total of 45 “projectiles” from Lebanon towards the occupied Golan Heights and Galilee on Saturday afternoon. However, there were no casualties.

The army said it had “hit the launch pad in southern Lebanon from which the missiles were fired towards the Golan Heights” and also targeted “another Hezbollah launch pad.”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned that his Iran-backed group would attack new targets in Israel if more civilians were killed in Israeli attacks.

According to an AFP count, at least 515 people have been killed in violence in Lebanon since October.

Most of the dead were fighters, but at least 104 were civilians among them.

On the Israeli side, according to Israeli authorities, 18 soldiers and 13 civilians were killed.