The violence came as top U.S. diplomats were in the region to push for cease-fires in Lebanon and Gaza.
By MELANIE LIDMAN, JULIA FRANKEL and FADI TAWIL
TEL AVIV, Israel Rocket barrages fired from Lebanon killed seven people in northern Israel on Thursday, authorities said, hitting agricultural areas along the border and near the city of Haifa in back-to-back attacks that represented the deadliest spate of strikes from Lebanon since the Israeli military invaded the country earlier this month.
The violence came as top U.S. diplomats were in the region to push for cease-fires in Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East in the Biden administration’s final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the U.S. election next week.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel, and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes, in the year since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s invasion and bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s rocket fire.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, and European Union.
The conflict along Israel’s northern border escalated into a full-blown war last month, when Israel launched a wave of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon that killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies. Israeli ground forces pushed into southern Lebanon on Oct. 1. Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign against Hezbollah has killed 2,800 people in Lebanon, wounded nearly 13,000 and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.
Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel’s escalation in September. Hezbollah’s intensified rocket attacks into Israel have forced 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from communities near the border.
