The Israeli military said it returned fire after an attack from Syria and launched an airstrike against militant Hezbollah in Lebanon amid a spike in hostilities with Iran-backed militia groups across the region.
The increase in tensions between Israel, Iran and its armed allies throughout the Middle East raises concerns about the opening of a second front in the nearly three-month war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli forces have regularly exchanged fire with the Lebanese Hezbollah since October 7. The Hamas offensive and the resulting Israeli offensive in Gaza, but tensions along Israel's northern border remained relatively contained, in part due to U.S. and other Western diplomatic efforts to prevent a wider regional war.
But Israeli leaders have warned in recent days that they are losing patience with diplomatic attempts to end attacks on areas of northern Israel, where more than 230,000 people have been displaced from their homes. More than 70,000 people have also fled their homes in southern Lebanon due to the conflict.
Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said on Friday that to ensure the security of its northern and southern borders, "Israel will act resolutely against every threat and will not allow a return to the pre-October reality."
The Syrian state news agency SANA said that the Israeli Air Force struck south of the city of Aleppo. The Israeli military declined to comment on the report, which Syria said occurred at 5:20 p.m. local time.
The Israeli military also said that two aircraft were launched from southern Lebanon towards Israeli territory on Saturday. Hezbollah claimed to have launched an attack.
The Israeli military said that last week, Israel and militants in Lebanon engaged in artillery exchanges and rocket fire, as well as increased responses including Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. Israel also said it shot down a drone that entered Israel from Lebanese territory on Thursday.
The state-run Lebanese national news agency said on Saturday morning that Israeli artillery and warplanes struck several areas in southern Lebanon.
The army said that militants in Lebanon injured several people in Israel this week, including at least one person who was hit by an anti-tank rocket fired at an Israeli church, and then several soldiers were injured in a follow-up attack when trying to evacuate him. An Israeli air strike in Lebanon killed three people, including two Lebanese-Australian citizens earlier this week.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that four of its members had died recently, without saying how or where their deaths occurred. The group posted photos and names of the four men in military uniforms on an official channel on the social networking platform Telegram.
The upsurge in hostilities in recent days comes after an airstrike in Damascus on Monday killed a senior official of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees a network of paramilitary groups across the Middle East. Israel is believed to have launched the attack but has not claimed responsibility. Iranian leaders have vowed revenge.
Any escalation poses risks for both sides. Hezbollah, with tens of thousands of battle-tested fighters and an arsenal of missiles provided by Iran, is a more capable opponent than the relatively lightly armed Hamas. During the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, Israel heavily bombed Lebanon, including Beirut airport and other civilian infrastructure, while Hezbollah rained rockets on Israel.
It has long been believed that the threat of destruction on both sides deterred the renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, but the Hamas attack on October 7 showed that deterrence alone was not enough to stop the worst attack on Israeli territory in history, a fact that changed the calculations of Israeli officials.
The war between Israel, Hamas and other militants also increases the risks to the US military forces stationed throughout the region. Iraqi militants overnight said they launched a drone attack on a US base in Iraq and fired missiles at another US base in Syria. Asked about the allegations, a Defense Department official said: "We do not have any intelligence or operational reports showing any attacks on US troop positions in Iraq and Syria overnight or early this morning.
Militants have launched at least 106 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to U.S. officials.
Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, during the attack inside Israel on October 7, and took more than 240 people hostage, according to Israeli officials. The attackers tortured civilians and set fire to residents ' houses.
More than 21,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military offensive on Gaza in response to the attack, according to Gaza health officials. These officials say that most of the dead were women and children, although the figure does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. Israeli strikes have devastated large areas of Gaza.
The Biden administration pressed both Israel and Lebanon to contain the fighting to prevent a wider regional war that could draw in Hezbollah and Iran's other allies. The Biden administration convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a strike against Hezbollah days after the October 7 attack, the Wall Street Journal reported.
In the southern West Bank, the Israeli military said it killed an attacker who carried out a car attack on an army post. This was the second such attack in two days.
In Gaza, the Israeli military said it continues to fight Hamas militants and launch air strikes in the Gaza Strip. The army said it dismantled two armed compounds in the northern city of Beit Lahiya.
The Israeli military earlier this week expanded its operations in the central Gaza Strip, with strikes focused on Palestinian refugee camps in the area. About 100,000 people have fled the area to the southernmost Gaza Strip in recent days, according to the UN. About 85% of the Strip's 2.2 million residents have fled their homes, according to the UN, with most of these confined to only a third of the Strip's territory under Israeli evacuation orders.
