Israel launches more strikes on Lebanon

Hezbollah denies rocket attack

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Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Lebanon in response to a rocket attack from across the border on Saturday, as militant group Hezbollah denied responsibility for the launch.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered “a second wave of strikes against dozens of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon”, the defence ministry said, in the largest escalation since a Nov 27 ceasefire.

It said the strikes were “a response to rocket fire towards Israel and a continuation of the first series of strikes carried out this morning” against southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported one girl among five people killed in an Israeli strike during the day on the southern town of Touline.

The agency later said three people were killed in an Israeli strike on the city of Tyre, targeted in the second wave of strikes on the south and east, with multiple injuries also reported.

HEZBOLLAH DENIAL

Bilal Kachmar, spokesman for the Tyre Disaster Management Unit, told AFP two people were killed and two wounded when “an Israeli strike targeted an apartment in a residential building in the Al-Raml neighbourhood of Tyre”, a key coastal city targeted for the first time since the ceasefire.