Lebanon's Hezbollah says fires rocket salvo at northern Israel
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Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched two barrages of rockets Monday at northern Israel in response to a deadly Israeli strike outside a south Lebanon hospital earlier in the day.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has traded regular cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on southern Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah fighters fired two salvos of "dozens of Katyusha rockets" at northern Israel "in response to the Israeli enemy attack that targeted the Martyr Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil," the group said in two subsequent statements.
The rockets targeted different areas of Israel's north including Meron and Kiryat Shmona, the group said.
The Israeli military said shortly after sirens sounded in the country's north.
Earlier Monday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) had said "an enemy drone" targeted "a motorcycle near the Salah Ghandour hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil", killing one person and wounding others, without specifying whether they were civilians.
The Islamic Health Committee, affiliated with Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah militant group, runs the hospital in the southern town.
The facility's administration said one person was killed and 10 others were wounded, four of them seriously.
Lebanon's health ministry condemned the "brutal Israeli strike" on the hospital, calling it a "war crime" in a statement.
A photographer contributing to AFP at the site of the strike saw a charred motorbike near the hospital entrance.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes also targeted motorbikes in three different locations in south Lebanon, the NNA reported, with five Hezbollah fighters and two civilians killed in those and other raids.
The Iran-backed group did not immediately announce any of its fighters had been killed on Monday.
In recent weeks, Hezbollah has stepped up its cross-border attacks, which it says are in support of Gazans and its ally Hamas, while Israel has struck deeper into Lebanese territory.
The violence has killed at least 441 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 84 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on its side of the border.