BEIRUT, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Hezbollah announced on Friday that it had prepared at dawn an ambush of guided missiles, artillery, and rockets for an Israeli convoy in the occupied Kfarchouba hills southeast of Lebanon.
The party said in a statement that the attack, near the Ruwaisat al-Alam site, destroyed two vehicles and prompted the enemy to create a smokescreen to cover the losses.
Lebanese military sources, who spoke anonymously, said that Israeli warplanes carried out seven airstrikes, during which they fired 14 air-to-surface missiles on the villages of Shebaa, Kfarchouba, Rachaya al-Fakhar, al-Habbariyeh, Halta, and the surrounding forests in the eastern sector of the border region.
The sources continued that the raids injured four citizens in Shebaa, and others suffered from suffocation from being exposed to smoke artillery shells.
The sources indicated that one of the raids destroyed an unoccupied house belonging to a Hezbollah official in Shebaa and damaged 12 neighboring houses. Two houses were also destroyed in Kfarchouba, and more than 11 others were damaged.
Eyewitnesses from Kfarchouba told Xinhua that, in the early hours of dawn, they heard a series of explosions in the vicinity of the Israeli Ruwaisat al-Alam site, resulting from missiles fired by Hezbollah at Israeli vehicles that were moving between the al-Sammaqa and al-Alam sites along the borderline separating Lebanon and Israel.
Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border escalated on Oct. 8, 2023, following a barrage of rockets launched by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah toward Israel in solidarity with Hamas' attack on Israel the day before. Israel then retaliated by firing heavy artillery toward southeastern Lebanon. ■
