The border between Israel and Lebanon saw a major deployment on both sides after Israeli tanks opened fire to push out protesters who crossed the disputed boundary in support of Palestinian fighters in Gaza battling with Israel.
“IDF tanks fired warning shots towards a number of rioters who crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” the Israel Defense Forces said Friday in a statement obtained by Newsweek. “The suspects sabotaged the fence and set a fire in the area before returning to Lebanese territory.”
Footage carried across social media and news outlets showed masses of protesters carrying Palestinian flags as well as those of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which has twice warred with Israel across the hostile border.
The information was confirmed by the Lebanese Ministry of Information, whose official news outlet reported that two youths were injured in the incident.
“Two Lebanese citizens were injured this afternoon, when two Israeli shells landed near them, after a number of young men attempted to enter the settlement of Metula through the barbed wire fence,” the official Lebanese News Agency reported, “which led to the Israeli army’s alertness and preventing them from advancing towards the fence by firing two shells at the young men.”
As a result, the Lebanese Armed Forces deployed to the scene.
“A large force of the Lebanese army and security forces arrived immediately and worked to prevent the young men from advancing, and set up checkpoints to prohibit any of the citizens from approaching the barbed wire,” the outlet reported, “while ambulances of the Islamic Health Authority transported the injured men to Marjayoun Governmental Hospital.”
“Meanwhile,” it added, “intense mobilization on both sides was witnessed during the process.”
On Thursday, the IDF said that three rockets had been fired from Lebanese territory into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Galilee.
IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told reporters earlier Friday that there were “no Israeli casualties and no damage,” but said that Israeli forces were keeping an eye northward on country’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria.
“We continue, of course, to be very vigilant, looking towards the north, the northeast and assessing everything happening there,” Conricus said. “Currently, [there is] no significant change in the situation up in the north, but we are monitoring events closely.”
A Lebanese official told Newsweek on Thursday that the rocket launches likely originated from the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidieh, which is located along the coast in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Armed Forces later said that they had discovered three rockets in the vicinity of the camp.
The unrest at the already uneasy border between Israel and Lebanon comes amid a conflagration in the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The latest round of fighting erupted after Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound amid demonstrations over an Israeli attempt to evict Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Palestinian armed factions such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have unleashed a barrage of nearly 2,000 rockets by IDF estimates, while the Israeli side has conducted hundreds of airstrikes and began ground operations Thursday in an effort to degrade combat capabilities in Gaza.
JALAA MAREY/AFP/Getty Images
This is a developing news story. More information will be added as it becomes available.
