Israeli police said two people were killed Tuesday by rocket fire in the annexed Golan Heights, the latest victims of months of cross-border clashes between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israeli forces.
The deaths came after a Syria war monitor said an Israeli strike in the country killed two people, with a source close to Iran-backed Hezbollah saying a former bodyguard to the group’s leader died in the raid, and the militant group announcing retaliatory fire.
Hezbollah since October has traded almost daily cross-border fire from Lebanon with the Israeli army in support of Palestinian ally Hamas, with Israel targeting operatives from the group in both Lebanon and neighbouring Syria.
The Israeli military said that “approximately 40 projectiles crossed from Lebanon into the area of the central Golan Heights. Several projectiles were identified falling in the area.”
Haim Biton, superintendent of the Golan police station, said that “as a result of the hit, a man and woman were killed instantly”, indicating their vehicle had been subject to a direct hit.
He said that firefighters were battling several blazes that had broken out in the area.
Hezbollah had said it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli military base in the Golan Heights “in response to the attack and assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out… on the Damascus-Beirut Road”.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said earlier Tuesday that “at least two people were killed and one was wounded in an Israeli drone strike on a Hezbollah car” near a Syrian army checkpoint close to the border with Lebanon.
A source close to the Iran-backed group, requesting anonymity, told AFP that a former bodyguard to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed in the strike, identifying him by the surname of Qarnabash.
Hezbollah in a statement announced the death of a fighter with the same surname.
Also Tuesday, Hezbollah released a video showing aerial surveillance footage it said was taken over intelligence and military positions in the Golan Heights.
Israel seized the territory from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognised by the international community.
Hezbollah in Syria
Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The strikes intensified after Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip, before easing after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus, sending regional tensions soaring.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 25 Hezbollah fighters in Syria since the Gaza war erupted, according to an AFP tally.
In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October 7 has killed nearly 500 people, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.
Last month, an Israeli strike targeted a convoy of tankers entering Lebanon from Syria, the Observatory had said, with Hezbollah announcing three dead and a source close to the group saying they were killed in east Lebanon’s Hermel area.
Earlier Tuesday, the Syrian defence ministry said an Israeli strike caused damage but no casualties near the coastal city of Baniyas, with the Observatory saying Iranian military advisers were based in the area.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in 2011 after Damascus cracked down on anti-government protests.
Hezbollah also fights in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
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