Two civilians have been killed and several others injured after the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired at least 150 rockets into northern Israel.
Paramedics said a man and a woman in their 40s were fatally injured by shrapnel in the border town of Kiryat Shmona. It was a couple walking their dog down a wooded street.
Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli forces in Kiryat Shmona, which has evacuated most residents after a year of cross-border fighting.
These were the first Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah since the conflict escalated two weeks ago, when Israel launched an intensive air campaign against the Iran-backed group before invading southern Lebanon.
The rocket or fragments that hit Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday also caused several fires.
We could smell the burning fires before we saw them. On one street, neighbors watched as three teams of firefighters tackled plumes of smoke from a house where a rocket had landed.
Katy Krelshtein watched in disbelief from the other side of the road – the house next door belonged to her father.
“I saw red,” she replied when I asked for her reaction. “It’s beyond fear now – it’s just anger.”
Missiles have been a daily reality in Kiryat Shmona for a year now, and many people there said they wanted their military to do whatever it took to stop them.
When we arrived and started filming, there were still a number of missile warnings and interceptions. This close to the border, residents have just seconds to reach a shelter.
We watched as a large barrage of over twenty rockets, followed by what appeared to be a rocket, was all intercepted in the sky above us. Some of what the Israeli military said was ninety projectiles fired from Lebanon in one eight-minute period.
Earlier on Wednesday we were in another town to the west, where the border runs straight down the hill that overlooks it. Burned patches of forest mark where artillery and rockets have landed.
In the deserted streets below, the sound of gunfire echoed from the other side of the hill around empty houses.
Shelley Barkan, one of the few who stayed there, said there are now sometimes eight or nine missile warnings every day.
“I have rockets in my yard,” she said. “Their goal is to kill us, to send Israel to the sea, and our goal is to defend ourselves.”
She showed us the catering room where she helps prepare food for the local soldiers.
While we were there, we heard a barrage of rockets from Lebanon fired over our heads towards Israeli towns further south.
Minutes later, rockets landed in the coastal city of Haifa, wounding another five people, including a teenage boy.
Israel has gone on the offensive after nearly a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by rocket, rocket and drone attacks from Hezbollah.
Hostilities have steadily escalated since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on October 8, 2023, the day after ally Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel.
The military says the aim of the ground invasion, which began nine days ago, is to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure along the border, which they say poses an immediate threat to Israeli communities.
There were reports of intense fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters in several southern Lebanese areas on Wednesday.
Hezbollah said its fighters had pushed back Israeli forces advancing on the western village of Labbouneh, attacked others in the eastern village of Maroun al-Ras, and shelled troops near Mays al-Jabal, near Kiryat Shmona.
The Israeli army, meanwhile, said its troops and aircraft had destroyed more than 100 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon over the past day.
Lebanon’s health ministry said at least four people were killed and 10 injured in an Israeli airstrike on the village of Wardaniyeh, northeast of the coastal city of Sidon.
The state-run National News Agency reported that the strike hit a hotel where displaced families were living.
