JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Tuesday an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon had struck a church in northern Israel and injured a civilian in the latest cross-border attack amid the Gaza war.
It said the missile hit the Greek Orthodox Church on a hilltop in Iqrit — an abandoned Palestinian Christian village whose people were forced to leave during the 1948 war and creation of Israel.
The army accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of continued firing at Israeli “civilian and religious sites“.
The frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Iran-backed Hezbollah, since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, raising fears of a broader conflict.
Hezbollah says it is acting in support of Hamas.
Since hostilities began, more than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also more than a dozen civilians, three of them journalists, according to an AFP tally.
On November 20, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that “Israeli artillery shelling” had targeted the Saint George Church in the border village of Yarun, causing “major damage”.
On Tuesday, Israeli bombardment wounded two people in the town of Tulin, around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border, according to the NNA.
Hezbollah claimed a series of attacks against Israeli troops and positions. In one attack, the group said it fired missiles at an Israeli barracks.
On the Israeli side, at least four civilians and nine soldiers have been killed since October 7, according to figures given by the army.
The ninth soldier died from wounds suffered earlier, the military said Tuesday.