Israel, Hezbollah firefight kills 3 militants, wounds 11 in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights

BEIRUT (AP) — Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed three Hezbollah members on Saturday, the Lebanese militant group said, after it retaliated with a rocket attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that wounded several people.

Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service initially reported that 11 people were injured, five of whom were seriously injured and the remaining six were seriously injured.

Hezbollah said in a statement that the attack, in which the militants fired Katyusha rockets at an Israeli army post in the Golan Heights, was in response to Israeli airstrikes on villages in southern Lebanon. The group said earlier that three of its members were killed on Saturday, without specifying where. The Israeli military said its air force struck a Hezbollah weapons depot in the border village of Kfar Kila, adding that the militants were inside at the time.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Middle East War in 1967 and later annexed it in 1981.

Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily since the war in Gaza began after a surprise Hamas attack on Oct. 7, which killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. Israel launched an offensive that has so far killed more than 39,000 people, according to local health authorities, displaced more than 80 percent of the territory’s population and created a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, gunfights along the Lebanon-Israel border have intensified, with Israeli airstrikes and rocket and drone attacks by Hezbollah taking place further and further from the border.

Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members, but also about 90 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed.