Hamas claims rocket attack from Lebanon on northern Israel

The military wing of the Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for firing a barrage of rockets towards northern Israel from south Lebanon on Wednesday.

Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said it targeted Israeli military sites with two barrages of Grad rockets.

The group claimed in a statement on its Telegram channel that it had bombed the headquarters of the 769th Eastern Brigade and the airport barracks in Beit Hilal.

The rocket strikes on Israel from southern Lebanon came in "response to Zionist massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip and the assassination of martyred leaders and their brothers in the southern suburbs [of Beirut]", the statement added.

The Israeli military said in a statement that "approximately 10 launches which crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel were identified", adding that sirens had sounded in north Israel’s Kiryat Shmona area.

Air defences "successfully intercepted a number of the launches", the statement said, adding that the army “struck the sources of the fire in Lebanon".

Israeli police reported property damage in the Kiryat Shmona area but no wounded.

An Israeli strike in January killed Hamas's deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri and six militants in Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold – the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the war.

This month, security sources told AFP a senior Hamas officer had survived an assassination attempt south of Beirut. The Israeli drone strike on the southern Lebanese border village of Hula on 10 February killed one and wounded nine others, but ultimately missed its intended target.

The escalating cross-border fire since 8 October, the day after Israel launched an unprecedented war on Gaza, has stoked fears of all-out war on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

The exchanges have killed at least 284 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 44 civilians, according to figures compiled by AFP.

At least 24 fighters from Palestinian groups including 10 Hamas members were also among the dead.

On the Israeli side, at least 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.

Agencies contributed to his report