Hezbollah rocket barrage targets Kiryat Shmona, hitting commercial center; no injuries

Hezbollah fired a barrage of some 15 rockets at northern Israel, one of which exploded in a commercial center in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona early Saturday, the military and local officials said.

There were no injuries in the strike that came while the center was closed, but the explosion caused extensive damage.

The Israel Defense Forces said that most of the rockets were intercepted, but it noted that one had impacted in Kiryat Shmona. It later published video showing an airstrike on the rocket launcher that was used in the attack.

Local residents described the long night with repeated siren warnings and explosions and expressed frustration with the government for failing to end the threat from the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group.

“At least 10 rockets and even one that hit the shopping center, which luckily was closed and there are no injuries,” local resident Eyal Vakrat told Ynet from the scene of the impact.

“It’s enough, we need to end this circus and hit them, not something pinpoint,” he said, calling for a wider military operation.

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“We have reached a choking point; this situation can’t go on. It was a hard night, very hard, never-ending sirens,” he said.

Kiryat Shmona, just over a mile from the border, has been one of the hardest hit Israeli border towns.

Hezbollah claimed the rocket fire on Kiryat Shmona in at least two statements, saying it launched a “rocket barrage” at the town “in defense of Lebanon and its people, and in response to the Israeli enemy’s violation of the ceasefire.”

Later Saturday, the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for residents of seven villages in southern Lebanon, saying it was about to strike Hezbollah targets there.

“In light of the terrorist organization Hezbollah’s violation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF is compelled to take decisive action against it,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X in two separate statements, naming seven villages in Lebanon’s south, including some near Nabatieh.

Lebanese media reported that the warnings were followed by several airstrikes in the region.

Also late Friday, the IDF said that a barrage of rockets launched by Hezbollah overnight Thursday struck a church in southern Lebanon.

According to the military, the rockets struck several buildings in Marjaayoun, including Saint Georges Orthodox Church, causing damage.

The IDF said that troops were not operating in the vicinity of the church.

A video released by the IDF showed the rockets striking Marjaayoun.

“This incident further proves how Hezbollah continues to endanger and harm Lebanese civilians,” the army adds.

The latest violence came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Friday that troops of the IDF’s 36th Division have crossed Lebanon’s Litani River, and Israeli and Lebanese military officials held a new round of talks in the US.

“Our forces crossed the Litani, and they’ve advanced to the dominating terrain,” Netanyahu said on a visit to troops on the northern border. “We’re also operating in Beirut, and in the Beqaa, across the entire front, and hitting Hezbollah hard.”

The IDF had on Thursday struck Beirut for the first time in three weeks, after mostly avoiding attacks on the Lebanese capital at the White House’s request amid the fragile ceasefires in Lebanon and Iran that US President Donald Trump announced last month.

The military confirmed Thursday that ground troops have, over the past several days, conducted raids beyond the military’s “forward defense line,” in addition to the airstrikes that have taken place beyond that line.

The defense line, which the IDF announced last month, demarcates the military’s declared security zone in southern Lebanon. The line lies mostly south of the Litani, which runs about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border and has long been Israel’s benchmark in the bid to push Hezbollah northward.

Meanwhile, on Friday, military representatives from Israel and Lebanon met at the Pentagon to discuss steps for combating Hezbollah.

It was the first strictly military meeting in the US-brokered negotiations since the sides agreed to split the talks into diplomatic and security tracks. Accordingly, Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter did not attend the talks on Friday, an embassy official said.

The first meeting of the diplomatic track will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday next week at the US State Department.

Friday’s meeting was not expected to lead to any major announcements, and the sides still face an uphill battle to reach a deal that would normalize Israeli-Lebanese relations and disarm Hezbollah, the embassy official said.

The Lebanese government demands that the deal ensure an IDF withdrawal from Lebanon, while the Iran-backed terror group is adamantly opposed to disarmament and has slammed the government for engaging with Israel on the issue.

Israeli and Lebanese negotiators previously held three rounds of talks at the State Department starting last month. The first round was followed days later by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire in Lebanon on April 16, eight days into the ceasefire in Iran.

That truce has not been felt in southern Lebanon, though, where Israel carries out daily strikes against what it says are Hezbollah operatives and infrastructure, and the Iran-backed terror group targets Israeli troops that have established an increasingly large buffer zone, which Jerusalem claims is for protecting its northern communities from enemy fire.

While the US has okayed Israeli strikes in Lebanon against targets that Jerusalem deems a threat, it has drawn a line on strikes in Beirut, which has largely avoided Israeli fire.