Red alert sirens sounded in northern Israel as rockets were fired from southern Lebanon hitting the city of Nahariya on Sunday. "Two Katyusha rockets were fired from a Lebanese village five kilometres (three miles) from the border with Israel," a source told AFP. An Israeli statement claims that "three rockets hit northern Israel." In Lebanon, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese army are searching for the point from which the rockets were fired.
No casualties were reported.
A Hezbollah media outlet in Lebanon has said that the rockets were fired from a village near Tyre, a southern Lebanese city of around 100,000, according to USA Today. The conflict is not over as "[t]he Israel Defence Forces have responded with targeted artillery fire following the rockets that hit Israel earlier today from southern Lebanon," according to the AFP.
The rocket fire is most likely retaliation for the death of a Hezbollah militant regarded as a hero, Samir Kantar, 54, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday, along with eight others. Israel does not claim responsibility for his death, according to USA Today.
Kantar was convicted in 1979 of killing four Israelis and spent 30 years in prison before being freed in an exchange in 2008. He was honored by Syria's Bashar Assad with the Order of Merit upon his release, and is viewed by Iran as a hero as well.
The border between Lebanon and Israel has been relatively quiet the past few years, since the two countries fought a war in 2006 that left most of the Hezbollah heartland in southern Lebanon in ruins.
