Tension escalates.
A drone strike blamed on Israel on a car in southern Lebanon left one dead on Sunday, according to local media, with Hezbollah announcing for its part that one of its fighters had been killed by Israeli fire.
Since the attack by Palestinian Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, there have been daily exchanges of fire on the Israeli-Lebanese border between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, which supports its ally Hamas, which Israel has sworn to “wipe out” in Gaza.
“The strike, which targeted a car in Kafra, killed one person, and others suffered moderate and minor injuries,” said the official Lebanese agency (ANI).
Also read: Israel-Hezbollah: a war on the Lebanese border ever closer?
According to the media, an “Israeli drone” struck a four-wheel drive vehicle near an army checkpoint in Kafra, about ten kilometers from the border between Israel and Lebanon, where tensions are increasingly increased in the regional context of the war in the Gaza Strip.
The strike destroyed the car and set fire to another vehicle located nearby, ANI said.
Later Sunday, Lebanese Hezbollah announced that one of its fighters had been killed "on the road to Jerusalem", an expression used by the pro-Iran movement to refer to its members killed by Israeli fire.
A Lebanese security source assured that no Lebanese soldier was injured or killed in this strike.
“Two series of strikes”
According to ANI, Israel targeted several localities in southern Lebanon on Sunday, including five destroyed houses in the border village of Markaba, without causing any casualties.
Hezbollah, for its part, declared that it had targeted Israeli positions.
The Israeli army later confirmed that it had bombed Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
“Army warplanes carried out two rounds of strikes on terrorist infrastructure, a military building, a launching post and an observation post belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Markaba in Lebanon today ( Sunday),” she said.
Army tanks and aircraft "also struck targets in a number of locations in southern Lebanon, including a Hezbollah operational command center and a military compound," it added.
Also read: Israel-Hamas: fighting, talks, situation in Gaza… where are we after 100 days of war?
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, cross-border violence has left more than 195 dead in Lebanon, including at least 144 fighters from Hezbollah, a movement strongly established in the south of the country, according to an AFP count.
On the Israeli side, 15 people were killed, including nine soldiers and six civilians, according to the Israeli army.
In recent weeks, Israel has been accused of carrying out several strikes targeting Iranian and allied figures in Syria and Lebanon who support Hamas, fueling fears of a widening conflict.