Hezbollah targets Israeli forces in retaliation to broad-scale overnight strikes

Israel launched overnight into Friday air strikes on several towns in southern Lebanon.

"Enemy warplanes launched nighttime strikes on the towns of Srifa, Aita al-Shaab, Touline, Sawana and Majdal Selm," the National News Agency reported.

Another strike targeted the eastern Lebanese town of Doures at dawn, the NNA said.

Hezbollah meanwhile claimed responsibility for a wave of strikes targeting Israeli forces, in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Lebanon the day before.

The group said in three separate statements on Telegram that its fighters had launched rockets and artillery shells at border positions early Friday, hours after firing rockets at Israeli barracks in the occupied Golan Heights and at a navy base in the Haifa port.

It later claimed attacks on military targets in Saasaa, Blat and Zariit with drones and rockets.

Later in the day, strikes targeted the Bekaa region, the coastal southern city of Sidon deep inside Lebanon, Wadi al-Marwaniya and other villages and towns in south Lebanon, as the Israeli army said it had begun a new wave of strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs.

The Israeli military said on Friday it had hit a Hezbollah command center and drone depot in a "broad-scale wave of strikes" overnight in Beirut's southern suburbs.

The strikes came after the Israeli army issued an evacuation warning for the area, home to hundreds of thousands of people and a stronghold of the Iran-backed Hezbollah, sending residents fleeing in panic.

"As part of the strikes, an executive council's command center and a facility storing UAVs (drones) utilized by Hezbollah for conducting attacks against the State of Israel were struck," the Israeli military said in a statement.

Overall, the Israeli army said it had carried out 26 waves of strikes in the suburbs, known as Dahieh, since the start of its campaign in the country this week.

The health ministry said on Thursday that 123 people had been killed and 683 wounded in the Israeli strikes across the country.