TEL AVIV, Israel
Two separate Hezbollah rocket attacks have killed seven people in northern Israel, authorities say - the deadliest day of such strikes in months.
An Israeli farmer and four
foreign agricultural workers were killed when rockets landed near Metula, a
town on the border with Lebanon, Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.
Later, an Israeli woman and
her adult son were killed in an olive grove near Kibbutz Afek, on the outskirts
of the coastal city of Haifa.
Hezbollah said it had fired
barrages of rockets towards the Krayot area north of Haifa and at Israeli
forces south of the Lebanese town of Khiam, which is across the border from
Metula.
The Israeli military
identified two projectiles crossing from Lebanon and falling in an open area
near Metula on Thursday morning.
The Israeli farmer who was
killed was named by local media as Omer Weinstein, a 46-year-old father-of-four
from nearby Kibbutz Dafna.
Thailand's Foreign Minister,
Maris Sangiampongsa, said on Friday that four Thai nationals were killed from
rocket fire.
A fifth Thai worker was
injured, he added.
Videos posted online showed
them being transferred by helicopter to the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa.
Haaretz said Mr Weinstein and
the foreign workers were in an agricultural field near the border fence at the
time of the attack.
It cited a member of the local
emergency response team as saying the Israeli military had permitted them to
enter the area despite Metula being inside a closed military zone.
The military established the
zone at the end of September, just before it launched a ground invasion of
Lebanon with the aim of destroying Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure.
Thursday’s second rocket
attack reportedly hit an agricultural area near Kibbutz Afek, which is about
65km (40 miles) south-west of Metula and 28km from the Lebanese border.
The military said a total of
55 projectiles were fired towards the Western Galilee region, where the kibbutz
is located, as well as the Central Galilee and Upper Galilee in the early
afternoon. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and others fell in open
areas, it added.
According to Haaretz,
60-year-old Mina Hasson and her 30-year-old son, Karmi, were killed by a rocket
that hit an olive grove where they were picking olives.
A 70-year-old man was also
lightly injured by shrapnel and taken to Rambam hospital, according to the
Magen David Adom ambulance service.
"We were called to the
olive grove and saw a man in his 30s lying on the ground, unconscious,” MDA
paramedics Mazor and Yishai Levy told the Jerusalem Post.
“We began resuscitation
efforts while conducting further searches, during which we located another
casualty, also in critical condition with multi-system injuries. We provided
her with medical treatment and performed resuscitation, but unfortunately, we had
to pronounce both of them dead," they said.
Meanwhile, the head of the
Irish military said a UN peacekeeping base in southern Lebanon that
houses Irish troops was hit by a rocket fired towards Israel on
Wednesday night.
The rocket landed inside an
unoccupied area of Camp Shamrock, which is 7km (4 miles) from the Israeli
border, causing minimal damage on the ground and no casualties, Lt Gen Sean
Clancy said.
Irish premier Simon Harris
said: "Thankfully everyone is safe but it is completely unacceptable that
this happened. Peacekeepers are protected under international law and the onus
is on all sides to ensure that protection.”
The deadly rocket attacks in
northern Israel came as two US special envoys met Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu in Jerusalem to discuss a possible ceasefire deal to end the war with
Hezbollah.
Netanyahu told Amos Hochstein
and Brett McGurk that the main issue was what he called Israel's ability to
“thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon in a way that will return our
residents safely to their homes”, his office said in a statement.
Israel went on the offensive
against Hezbollah - which it proscribes as a terrorist organisation - after
almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.
It said it wanted to ensure
the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of northern Israeli border
areas displaced by rocket attacks, which Hezbollah launched in support of
Palestinians the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October
2023.
More than 2,800 people have
been killed in Lebanon since then, including 2,200 in the past five weeks, and
1.2 million others displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
Israeli authorities say more
than 60 people have been killed by Hezbollah rocket, drone, and missile attacks
in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.
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