The Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Tuesday it had launched a drone attack on Israeli military bases north of the city of Acre, in its deepest attack into Israeli territory since the Gaza war began.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of any of its facilities being attacked by Hezbollah, but had said earlier on Tuesday that it intercepted two “aerial targets” off Israel’s northern coast.
The two sides have been engaging in regular exchanges of missile fire and airstrikes since the start of the war in Gaza last October, but have refrained from escalating the conflict into an all-out war.
However, as the attacks continued, fears grew that an accident or miscalculation by either side could cause the conflict to rapidly escalate, possibly drawing in other regional and global powers, including the United States.
Hezbollah said it had acted in retaliation for an earlier Israeli attack that killed one of its fighters. The group posted what appeared to be a satellite photo, with the location of the attack symbolized by a flash with a red circle around it that was halfway between Acre and Nahariyya to the north.
In response, the Israeli military said fighter jets attacked military targets in Ayta ash Shab and Blida and in the Markaba area of southern Lebanon.
Earlier on Tuesday, the military said Israeli airstrikes killed two Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah later confirmed the death of one of its fighters, Hussein Azkoul, but did not provide further details.
A separate Israeli strike overnight killed a fighter from Hezbollah’s elite unit, the Radwan Forces, the military said, although Hezbollah has not confirmed his death.
Since October, Israeli strikes have killed about 270 Hezbollah fighters, as well as about 50 civilians. Hezbollah rocket and drone fire has killed a dozen Israeli soldiers and half the civilians. The bombing has displaced tens of thousands of people on each side.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir in Dubai and Maayan Lubell and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, William Maclean and Alex Richardson)