Israel bombs Lebanon in retaliatory attack

  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine confirmed that one of its bases was targeted [Reuters]

Air strike hits target south of Beirut in response to four rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israel.

Israel’s air force has bombed a target south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in retaliation for an earlier volley of rockets fired across the border towards Israel, the Israeli military and a Palestinian group in Lebanon say.

An Israeli military source said the “terror site” bombed early on Friday morning was near Naameh, between Beirut and Sidon, but did not immediately provide further details.

Four rockets fired on Thursday caused minor damage in northern Israel, but there were no casualties.

An armed Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), told Lebanon’s al-Manar television station that one of its bases south of Beirut had been targeted in the Israeli air strike, and that there had been no casualties.

The PFLP-GC did not claim responsibility for or any connection to the earlier rocket attack.

The Israeli military dismissed Thursday’s rocket attack, in which one rocket was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defence system, as an “isolated incident”.

“Israel will not tolerate terrorist aggression originating from Lebanese territory,” the military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement announcing Friday’s air strike.

Commenting on the rocket attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that “anyone who tries to attack us should know that we will hurt them”.

Thursday’s rocket fire was the first such incident since May. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for it.

The rockets were fired from Rashidiyah, a Palestinian refugee camp near the southern city of Tyre in Lebanon.

“I heard a weak explosion, and then in parallel to the siren, I heard a stronger boom,” Keinan Engel, a resident of Nahariya, told the Israeli Army Radio. “I went to take cover, in a reinforced room.”

Eli Bean, the director of Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service, said no one had been hurt.

Israel and Lebanon are technically at war. Israel briefly invaded Lebanon during an inconclusive 2006 conflict with armed group Hezbollah.

---