Hezbollah says Israel will pay ‘the price’ for strike that killed civilians

A man checks the destruction following an Israeli airstrike the previous day on the village of Taybeh near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon, on February 15, 2024. -(Photo by HASSAN FNEICH / AFP)
A man checks the destruction following an Israeli airstrike the previous day on the village of Taybeh near the border with Israel in southern Lebanon, on February 15, 2024. -(Photo by HASSAN FNEICH / AFP)

Hezbollah says Israel would pay “the price” for killing at least 10 people including five children in southern Lebanon, the deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in four months of hostilities across the Lebanese-Israeli border.

“The enemy will pay the price for these crimes,” Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah tells Reuters. “The resistance will continue to practice its legitimate right to defend its people.”

Senior Hezbollah official Sheikh Nabil Kaouk says at an event in southern Lebanon that the terror group was “prepared for the possibility of expanding the war” and would meet “escalation with escalation, displacement with displacement, and destruction with destruction.”

Several of the Lebanese terror group’s fighters were also killed in separate strikes on Wednesday, including on Nabatieh, according to the group and security sources.

Asked about the Nabatieh strike, a spokesperson for the Israeli army says it was waiting for further information “on this event but we will update when we know further details.”

The conflict between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel has played out in parallel to the Gaza war, fueling concern about the risk of an all-out confrontation between the heavily armed adversaries.

Both sides have said they do not seek all-out war, and the conflict has largely been contained to areas near the border.

A source familiar with Hezbollah thinking says the attack on Nabatieh marked an Israeli escalation but was still within unwritten “rules of engagement.”

Israel said on Wednesday it had responded to cross-border rocket fire from Lebanon that had killed one of its soldiers and hospitalized eight others in the city of Safed, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the Lebanese border.

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