SOUTH LEBANON, July 29 The Israeli army shelled 15 towns in eastern and southern Lebanon with heavy artillery after threatening the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which Israel accused of shelling the Golan Heights on Saturday, Lebanese Al-Manar TV reported.
According to him, in the Baalbek region in eastern Lebanon they fired heavy artillery at the city of Taria, and in the Bint Jbeil district in southern Lebanon they bombed the settlements of Aita al-Shaab, Yarun, Ramiya and Aytarun, and in the Marjayoun district near the border with Israel bombed the cities of Khiyam, Kfar Qila, Mays el-Jebal and Markaba, in the Tire area the Israeli army attacked the cities of Burj el-Shamali, Al-Abbasiya, Tayr, Kharfa, An-Nakura and Shikhin.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will not leave unanswered the attack on the Golan Heights, which occurred on Saturday evening; the Shiite Hezbollah movement, in his words, will pay for this “the highest price — one that it has not yet paid.» Later, the Ynet portal reported, citing senior officials, that Israel could engage in hostilities in Lebanon for several days with a new level of intensity.
On Saturday, the Israeli ambulance press service said that the strike In the Golan Heights, 10 people were killed, later the number of victims rose to 12. Israel blamed the attack on Hezbollah.
A senior source in the Lebanese Shiite movement said that Hezbollah denied involvement in the shelling of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Despite this, Israeli officials began to declare that a war with Hezbollah and Lebanon was imminent. On Sunday morning, the Israeli army said that it had struck a number of Hezbollah targets deep in Lebanon and in the south of the country.
The Axios portal, in turn, wrote that Hezbollah informed the UN that the incident in Majdal Shams was connected to the fall of an Israeli interceptor missile on Lebanese territory.
Until 1967, the Golan Heights were part of the Syrian province of Quneitra, inhabited mainly by Druze, a distinct ethno-confessional group of Arabs. During the Six-Day War of 1967, as well as the Fourth Arab-Israeli War of 1973, Tel Aviv captured two-thirds of this strategic territory. In 1981, the Jewish state unilaterally declared sovereignty over the region, but the UN Security Council did not recognize this decision. In March 2019, US President Donald Trump recognized the occupied Golan as Israeli territory.
Aggravation between Israel and Lebanon The situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border worsened after the start of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip in October last year. The IDF and Hezbollah members fire at each other's positions every day.
According to the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, due to the shelling, approximately 100 thousand people had to leave their homes in the south of the country. Tel Aviv reported about 80 thousand residents of the north of the Jewish state who found themselves in a similar situation.