BEIRUT: A local Hezbollah official was seriously wounded on Monday in an Israeli air strike on his car in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said.

Israeli forces and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire since October.

The source said an Israeli strike “targeted a local Hezbollah official in the town of Bint Jbeil” and the official was “seriously injured”.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said “an enemy drone targeted a car near the hospital” in Bint Jbeil, which lies near the country’s southern border with Israel.

Eyewitnesses recall seeing the targeted car, severely damaged with its roof pierced through.

Israel has launched a series of strikes in recent days that have injured officials from Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups in southern Lebanon.

On Saturday, senior Hamas officer Bassel Saleh survived a reported Israeli strike on his car in the Lebanese border town of Hula, security sources said, adding that two others were killed in the strike. On Thursday, an Israeli drone strike seriously wounded a Hezbollah commander in the southern city of Nabatiyeh, with the group later firing a salvo of rockets into northern Israel.

Israeli strikes on Monday targeted a number of villages in the south of Lebanon.

Cross-border fire since the start of the Gaza crisis has killed 231 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 30 civilians.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2024