An IDF strike killed two journalists working for a Lebanese TV channel and a third person near the border with Israel on Tuesday, Lebanese state media and the channel Al Mayadeen said.
An IDF spokesman confirmed the attack, stating that the its targets are sources of attacks fired from Lebanon into Israel.
Hezbollah then launched rockets into the Jewish state, stating that their recent attacks on Tuesday afternoon against Israel’s North were an “initial response to the killing of journalists.”
Al Mayadeen said the strike, near the town of Tir Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier, had deliberately targeted the TV crew because the channel was known to be pro-Palestinian and pro-Iran‘s regional military alliance.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati also blamed Israel, saying in a statement that the strike was an Israeli attempt to silence the media.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A second IDF strike on a car about seven miles from the border and near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre killed four people later in the day, the state news agency reported. It did not give details.
Fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah broke out along the border after the terrorist group’s Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack against Israel on October 7.
The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel in response has bombarded and invaded the Gaza Strip, killing at least 13,300 people according to the territory’s Hamas-run government.
Violence at the border
Israel-Lebanon border violence has escalated, raising Western fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran.
The worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006, it has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops, and three Israeli civilians.
Al Mayadeen named its killed journalists as Farah Omar, a correspondent, and Rabie al-Memari, a camera operator.
The third person killed in the strike was Hussein Aqil, who was at the site where the crew was filming. Al Mayadeen told Reuters he was not working with the channel.
More than 50 journalists have been killed since October 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, most of them in Gaza.
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