Uptick in tit-for-tat attacks on Israel-Lebanon border - and they're becoming more deadly

Since 8 October when Hezbollah first fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Palestinians following the Hamas attacks, the two sides have exchanged nearly 5,000 strikes.

The majority have come from Israel – but analysis by Sky News’ Data and Forensics team shows Hezbollah is changing its tactics, with its attacks stretching further into Israeli territory than ever before.

This is Alex Crawford’s report:

We’re with UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon and we can hear the regular crumple of explosions on the horizon.

We occasionally see plumes of smoke as the rockets land.

“It’s going to be a hot day,” says Lieutenant Colonel Jose Irisarri with sanguine understatement.

And he isn’t talking about the weather, although the thermometers are heading towards 40C and the “blue helmets”, as they’re known, are all wearing heavy body armour.

“You have to be ready to go to the bunkers,” we’re told. They tell us they’ve recently spent nine hours in one stretch underground as the cross-firing continues above.

When we join them, there seems to be an uptick in the tit-for-tat attacks between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah fighting group.

The pattern is unpredictable but overnight there’s been a big Israeli strike targeting two Hezbollah commanders in Safad al Battikh, a village which hasn’t been hit previously and where nearly two dozen civilians are also hurt.

Hezbollah fighters have responded with a volley of return rockets. Their partners in Yemen, the Houthis, have also reacted, sending a drone as far as Tel Aviv, into a building a hundred metres away from the US embassy. The attack kills one.

“We expect it to be quite active here,” Lt Col Irisarri says.

The Lt Col is part of the Spanish battalion in the East Sector along what is known as the Blue Line – the demarcation between Lebanon and Israel and where UN troops have been uncomfortably sandwiched for more than nine months between the warring sides.

He tells us there have been three other Lebanese villages hit in the hours before we join them.

As we head out in a heavily armoured UN convoy, there is the constant crackle of radio chatter. They’re receiving information from other UN colleagues about the possibility of more attacks.

We’re told one of the areas they want to take us to is now off-limits.

“Maybe some attacks are being planned right now but we don’t really know,” Lt Col Irisarri tells us over the radio. “We have to return to base.”

“Every two days, even daily, we can see one or two houses destroyed. And two to three days ago, they were not destroyed yet,” he adds, as we pass flattened homes and businesses.

Dozens of communities on both sides of the border are now shattered ghost towns. About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes while an estimated 100,000 Lebanese have abandoned their villages.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah group began its latest strikes from Lebanon the day after the Hamas attacks inside Israel on 7 October.

Since then, the two sides have exchanged increasingly dangerous and deadly tit-for-tat attacks, stretching further and going deeper – and causing global alarm that the exchanges will spark a much more widespread regional war.

Hezbollah is the strongest partner in the Iranian-headed so-called Axis of Resistance, which also includes the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq and Syria.

While we’re with the UN, we see large sections of Kfar Kila and other nearby Lebanese villages that we travel through appear to be largely rubble. We last visited this area eight months ago, and it is destroyed almost beyond recognition now.

The UN troops we’re with weave their way through this devastation flying their blue flags and tell us they see changes on the landscape on an almost daily basis.

Their UN base is at a particularly vulnerable spot between Israeli-occupied Syrian land, Lebanon and Israel – and there have been strikes within a few hundred metres of them.

“We see everything from here,” Captain Gonzalez says. “We’ve seen white phosphorous, drones flying around, fighter planes flying around, artillery strikes, airstrikes… We are right in the middle.”

A few days earlier, we join the Shia Muslim Ashura commemorations in Beirut where thousands turn out.

The commemorations are centred around a speech by their leader Hassan Nasrullah, who tells his followers they will defend Lebanon to the hilt. Hezbollah, he continues to say, doesn’t want war but is prepared for one.

There are Palestinian flags liberally dotted among the very many commemorating Ashura. Hezbollah is still firmly linking its attacks with the fate of Gaza.

Without a ceasefire, those attacks look set to continue – and they’re becoming more and more deadly and dangerous.

Reporting with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and producers Jihad Jneid and Sami Zein.

This article was originally published by Sky.com. Read the original article here.

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