Hezbollah official wounded in Israeli strike on Lebanon: security source

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

Israeli forces and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire since war broke out on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip.

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

An AFP journalist on the ground saw 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, according to AFP and NNA journalists.

Cross-border fire since the start of the Israel-Hamas war has killed at least 231 people in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 30 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.