Israel bombs Beirut after Hezbollah launches rocket attack
Al Jazeera
Hezbollah says its attack is in response to the killing of Iran’s Khamenei and ‘in defence of Lebanon and its people’.
Israeli jets have bombed Lebanon’s Beirut after Hezbollah launched what it said was a rocket and drone attack against a military base near Haifa in northern Israel.
The Lebanese group said early on Monday that its attack was in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, “in defence of Lebanon and its people” and “in response to the repeated Israeli aggressions”.
“The resistance leadership has always affirmed that the continuation of Israeli aggression and the assassination of our leaders, youth and people gives us the right to defend ourselves and respond at the appropriate time and place,” the group said in a statement.
“The Israeli enemy cannot continue its fifteen-month-long aggression without a warning response to halt this aggression and withdraw from the occupied Lebanese territories.”
The violence marks a major escalation in what is becoming a regional war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran and its allies on the other.
