Two Katyusha rockets fired from Lebanon landed west of the northern Galilee town of Kiryat Shmona at approximately 7 a.m. local time.
No one was wounded and there was no damage reported
from the attack.
Security officials said a total of four rockets were
launched from southern Lebanon, but two failed to make it across the border,
landing inside Lebanon. The report was followed on Sunday morning by a Lebanese
report of two rocket falls near Sarda, a village some 10 kilometers from Marj
Ayoun near the border with Israel. Lebanese Army troops deployed to the area to
investigate.
The IDF said in a tweet on its Hebrew-language Twitter
feed that it retaliated for the rocket attack with “massive artillery fire of
dozens of shells targeting the source of the [rocket] fire.” Lebanese sources
disagreed on the number and targets of the shells fired by the IDF, with
Lebanon’s state news agency saying that over 20 shells hit the mountainous,
rugged area around the southern Lebanese border area of Rashaya early Sunday.
There were no reports of injuries on the Lebanese side.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s official Al-Manar news outlet
reported four artillery shells targets the southern Lebanese village of Shuba.
Lebanese and UN security forces went on high alert following the exchange of
fire.
Residents in Kiryat Shmona reported a smoke cloud
rising from one of the landing sites on Sunday morning.
“I heard the falls from my house,” Kiryat Shmona Mayor
Nissim Malka told Army Radio Sunday morning, describing the explosions as “loud
booms.”
“The army is investigating. We’re convening a meeting
of the city council,” Malka said.
IDF forces were sweeping the area to locate the fallen
rockets.
“This attack from Lebanese soil is an inexcusable,
unacceptable blatant breach of Israel’s sovereignty,” IDF spokesman to the
international press Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said on Twitter Sunday.
“Launching rockets from Lebanon in to Israel
jeopardizes thousands of civilian lives in the north, a reality no sovereign
state would accept. The IDF maintains the right to self defense and will
operate accordingly against the perpetrators,” he added.
Megjegyzések