Jerusalem (CNN) Israel struck targets belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in southern Lebanon and launched a series of retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza early Friday, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The launches came hours after dozens of rockets were fired from neighboring Lebanon into Israeli territory, a barrage the Israeli military blamed on Palestinian militants.
“The IDF will not allow the terrorist organization Hamas to operate from inside Lebanon and holds the Lebanese state accountable for every direct fire coming from its territory,” the IDF said in a statement.
Earlier, a CNN journalist in Gaza City heard the sounds of planes and explosions, minutes after the IDF announced it was targeting Gaza, a coastal enclave controlled by Hamas. Israeli strikes hit many areas in Gaza, and several rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel in response.
Following the Gaza attacks, Hamas released a statement saying it “holds the occupation responsible for its aggression against Jerusalem and Gaza.”
The IDF said its fighter jets hit two “terrorist” tunnels in Beit Hanoun and Khan Yunis, along with two of Hamas’ weapons manufacturing sites, “in response to Hamas’ security violations in recent last day.”
An IDF drone also hit a heavy machine gun in northern Gaza that was used to fire rounds toward IDF jets and Israeli territory, the IDF said in a statement.
Hours before the IDF attack on Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “Israel will hit our enemies and they will pay for every act of aggression.”
Smoke and flames rose from an explosion caused by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City early Friday.
The exchange of fire comes as anger simmers across the region Israeli police attack at the al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, in Jerusalem on Wednesday, drawing widespread condemnation from the Arab and Muslim world and prompting retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza toward Israel.
On Thursday, the IDF said 34 rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon in the biggest attack since the 2006 war between the two countries that left around 1,200 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis dead. died
Videos posted on social media showed rockets from Lebanon piercing the air over northern Israel, and the sounds of explosions in the distance. Israel closed its northern airspace after the barrage. An Israeli military spokesman said they believed Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group was behind the attack, not the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
A member of the Israeli police bomb disposal unit inspects the remains of a bullet fired from Lebanon and intercepted by Israel in the northern town of Fassuta on Thursday.
The Lebanese army confirmed that several rockets were launched from the south of the country, but did not say who fired them. It said on Twitter that a unit had found “missile launchers and a number of rockets intended for launch” around the Lebanese towns of Zibqin and Qlaileh, and was “currently working to dismantle them.”
Hezbollah, which dominates Lebanon’s southern border region militarily and politically, has neither denied nor claimed responsibility for the rocket fire into Israel. But the powerful Iran-backed armed group appeared to hint at this in a statement on Thursday, warning that “hundreds of millions of Muslims” were ready to “shed blood” for al-Aqsa. In recent months, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said that violations of the mosque compound in Jerusalem’s old city would cause “all hell to break loose in the region.”
Tensions were high after Israeli police raided the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on two separate occasions on Wednesday, as Palestinian worshipers offered prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. Footage from inside the mosque showed Israeli officers beating people with their batons and rifle-butts, then arresting hundreds of Palestinians. Israeli police said they entered the mosque after “hundreds of rioters” tried to barricade themselves inside.
International IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht blasted the rocket fire in Israel’s two attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque, saying they created “very negative energy.”
“The context of the story begins two days ago on the Temple Mount with very, very harsh images appearing at night prayer,” Hecht said, using the Jewish name for the holy site of Jerusalem, which known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.
The foreign minister for Jordan, the custodian of the al-Aqsa mosque and other Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, said “we are in a very dangerous moment.”
“What we see happening on the Lebanese border is clearly a consequence, a reaction to what we saw happening in al-Aqsa [mosque],” Ayman Safadi told CNN on Thursday. .
Lebanon and Israel are considered enemy states, but a truce between them has largely been held since the 2006 war.
There have been several small rocket attacks from Lebanon in recent years that have prompted retaliatory strikes from Israel. Few casualties have been reported in those incidents, with the highest death toll in an exchange of fire in 2015 that killed two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper. Palestinian factions in Lebanon are believed to be behind those rocket attacks.
The 2006 conflict was the largest to erupt between Lebanon and Israel since 1982. About 1,200 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis died in an exchange of fire that involved a nationwide Israeli aerial assault, and a naval and aerial blockade. Hezbollah fired multiple rounds of rockets that reached deep into Israeli territory during the conflict.
The escalation is ‘extremely serious’
The Israeli military blamed the rockets from Lebanon on either Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with Hecht saying the IDF assumed “Hezbollah knew about it, and Lebanon was also responsible.”
But he emphasized several times that the IDF viewed the attack as coming from a Palestinian source, and that it did not represent an expansion of the conflict to actors outside of the direct Israeli-Palestinian conflict, raising hopes that the tensions will be relieved afterwards. the incident.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry also said it was ready to cooperate with the United Nations and take steps to “restore calm and stability” in the south, while calling on the “international community to put pressure on Israel to stop the development,” the property of the state. Reported by the National News Agency.
The IDF has long been concerned about an increase on the Lebanese border, and hosted a high-level seminar in the spring of 2022 to brief journalists and policymakers about it.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said Thursday’s escalation of violence between Lebanon and Israel was “very serious.”
UNIFIL also said it had ordered its personnel stationed at the border between the two countries to move to air raid shelters, as a “standard practice.”
The White House said it was “deeply concerned by the continued violence and we urge all sides to avoid further escalation.”
Ibrahim Dahman and Ghazi Balkiz contributed to this report.
