BEIRUT (Reuters) -Israeli warplanes struck Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley for a second consecutive day on Tuesday, hitting a facility belonging to Hezbollah and killing at least one member of the Iran-backed group, sources in Lebanon said.
Hezbollah announced earlier on Tuesday it had fired more than 100 rockets at Israeli targets, one of its biggest barrages in more than five months of hostilities waged in parallel to the Gaza war.
The Hezbollah member was killed and several more were wounded in an airstrike in the village of Nabi Chit, said one of the sources, who was familiar with the details. The targeted region is a stronghold of the Shi’ite Islamist group Hezbollah near the Lebanese-Syrian border.
The Gaza war has prompted the worst hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel since a 2006 war, fuelling fears of an all-out conflict between the heavily armed adversaries.
The violence has largely been contained to areas near the Israeli-Lebanese border, with notable exceptions including Israel’s first airstrike in the Bekaa Valley on Feb. 26, and a Jan. 2 Israeli drone strike in Beirut that killed a top Hamas leader.
Hezbollah said in a statement it had fired more than 100 Katyusha rockets at 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT), targeting several Israeli military posts, in response to Israeli shelling of the Bekaa region the previous night.
At least one civilian was killed and several others were injured in Monday’s Israeli strikes, one of which hit the southern entrance to the city of Baalbek, about 2 km (1.2 miles) from its ancient Roman ruins, two security sources and the Baalbek governor Bashir Khader said.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut and Jana Choukeir in Dubai and , Writing by Maya Gebeily and Tom Perry;Editing by Peter Graff and Kim Coghill)
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