'You hit us, we hit you' Life in the borderlands of conflict

Like every morning, Ali Abu Khudoud woke up just before dawn last Sunday to perform the fajr prayer.

- William Christou BEIRUT

His daily ritual, however, was interrupted when the windows began to rattle and his house shake. As the sound of dozens of low-flying war planes and airstrikes grew louder, it became clear that this was more than the occasional bout of shelling he had got used to.

"It was a very hard night and an even harder morning... It feels like it's too near, nobody could sleep," Abu Khudoud, a shopkeeper in the city of Nabatieh in south Lebanon, said.

Last Sunday, Israel carried out its most intense aerial barrage on Lebanon since the war in Gaza began in October, launching more than 40 airstrikes across nearly 30 locations. Israeli officials claimed the attack was pre-emptive, directed at Hezbollah missile launchers aimed at targets inside Israel, detected by intelligence agencies the day before.

Lebanon's health ministry said three people were killed in the airstrikes, with two more injured. Hezbollah and its allied political party, Amal, announced the death of three of their fighters a few hours later.

Despite the flurry of airstrikes, Hezbollah proceeded with an attack of its own, hitting 11 military sites across Israel with a combination of drones and more than 320 Katyusha rockets. In a statement, the Lebanese group said it was the "first phase" of a retaliation for Israel's killing of its top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut nearly a month earlier.