Armed groups in Lebanon fired a heavy barrage of rockets toward Israel on Thursday, in an unusual and serious escalation that followed weeks of growing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia and political group that dominates southern Lebanon.
The attack came a day after an Israeli police raid on a mosque at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, which was met with widespread anger outside of Israel, particularly among Muslims.
An emergency medical group, Magen David Adom, said that several people inside Israel were hurt — including one person hit by shrapnel.
Israel fought a full-scale war with Hezbollah in 2006 and regularly strikes Hezbollah-linked targets in allied Syria, and occasionally in Lebanon. But confrontations on the Israeli-Lebanese border had been kept in relative check over the past decade.
Fears of a larger battle rose in recent weeks, however, after a man whom Israeli officials suspect was connected to Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon to Israel last month. The man planted a roadside bomb beside an Israeli highway before he was shot and killed by Israeli security officers.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recently claimed that Israel was on the verge of collapse, referring to the domestic political crisis over a proposed judicial overhaul that has exacerbated longstanding divisions within Israeli society.
The rockets from Lebanon compound a tense security situation for Israel.
Unrest and violence have also been at unusually high levels in the occupied West Bank. And there was a surge this week in rocket fire from Gaza following the Jerusalem mosque raid.
