CAIRO (Reuters) – Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said it hit a key Israeli observation post early on Saturday with 62 rockets as a “preliminary response” to the killing of Hamas’ deputy chief earlier this week.
Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday, Jan. 2 in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh.
Analysts said the strike could be seen as a message to Hamas ally Hezbollah that even its prime stronghold of Dahiyeh could be vulnerable to Israeli attack.
Hezbollah had said his killing would not go without punishment. Its head Sayyed Hassan Nassallah said on Friday that being “silent” on the strike would allow all of Lebanon to be vulnerable to more attacks.
The statement on Saturday said the group had hit a main post on an elevated hilltop that Israel relied on for “aerial observation” and “air control”.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. (This story has been corrected to say that the the Hamas official was killed this week, not the last, in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Writing by Muhammad Al Gebaly; Editing by Jan Harvey)
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