Israeli forces carried out an airstrike against the home of a Lebanese family in the border village of Mays al-Jabal, killing a family of four, including both parents and two children aged 12 and 21. A number of others were reported wounded.
Details are still emerging as to what exactly happened and why the house was struck. All indications are that those killed were civilians, and that it was a civilian home. Israel has, as usual, declined to comment.
This is not out of keeping with recent Israeli airstrikes in which houses, often referred to as “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure,” are targeted and sometimes damaged, sometimes utterly destroyed. In recent months, over 1,000 homes across southern Lebanon have suffered such devastation.
This has forced some 100,000 Lebanese civilians who lived in the south to flee northward to escape the near constant attacks. With their homes gone or in shambles, it’s not clear even if calm did return, what they would return to or when.
Hezbollah responded to the incident by firing an estimated 65 Katyusha and Falaq rockets at the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmoma. Israel reported that some rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome, though at least one man was reported injured in the strikes.
Though retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah are not unusual, this is one of the single largest barrages of rocket fire from the group yet. Such attacks almost always lead to retaliation from Israel and then more retaliation from Hezbollah.
It is this tit-for-tat retaliation and the increased escalation of recent weeks that have many international officials worried that it could soon lead to a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon by Israel.
While Israeli officials have in fact threatened invasion, French and US officials have been in talks to try to prevent such a conflict, and are offering a deal in which Hezbollah would be removed from the direct border area by approximately 10 kilometers.
