The Albany Gazette - Israel, Hezbollah exchange fire amid calls for restraint after Golan attack

The strike on the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on Saturday, whose victims were aged between 10 and 16, was blamed by Israel and the United States on Lebanon's Hezbollah, but the Iran-backed group has denied any connection to the attack.

During a visit Monday to Majdal Shams, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "severe response", raising fears yet again that the Gaza war could spill over into a wider regional conflagration, despite international appeals for calm.

Israeli medics on Tuesday said one civilian, a 30-year-old man, was killed following a rocket attack on the northern kibbutz of HaGoshrim.

The Israeli army meanwhile reported its forces were "striking the sources of fire", which were in Lebanon.

It had said earlier that it struck around 10 Hezbollah targets overnight in seven different areas of south Lebanon, killing one fighter from the Iran-backed group.

Hezbollah said on Tuesday that it had fired a salvo of Katyusha rockets at a military headquarters in the village of Beit Hillel, in response to "the Israeli enemy's attack on the town of Jibchit, which resulted in civilian casualties".

Lebanon's official National News Agency had reported a strike in the Jibchit area that caused "major damage".

- 'Constant anxiety' -

Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily fire with Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas since war erupted in Gaza in October.

At least 531 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. Most have been fighters, but the toll includes at least 105 civilians.

The violence has so far killed 22 soldiers and 25 civilians on the Israeli side, including in the Golan Heights, according to army figures.

Lebanon has been bracing for major retaliatory strikes following the Golan attack, amid international efforts to defuse tensions.

But Druze residents of the town -- the vast majority of whom have rejected Israeli citizenship and identify as Syrians -- have rejected threats of retaliation for the deadly strike.

Scores of Majdal Shams residents had come out to protest Netanyahu's visit after the burial of the last of the victims of the rocket strike.

A paramedic from Majdal Shams, Nabih Abu Saleh, told AFP his community was "against any Israeli response", and asked: "Who will we strike? Our people in Syria and Lebanon?"

A French diplomat told AFP that Paris "alongside other partners, notably the United States, is making all-out efforts to call on the parties to exercise restraint and not to be drawn into spiralling violence".

Lebanon's Middle East Airlines chairman Mohammed al-Hout said Beirut airport, its only international facility, "is not exposed to any threat, it is supposed to be a neutral place", state media reported.

Multiple international airlines have suspended flights to Beirut amid Israel's promises of retaliation.

The Lebanese public, meanwhile, has been gripped by worry, with mother of two Cosette Beshara describing living "in a state of constant anxiety".

"I'm always thinking about how I will escape with my children if war breaks out," said the 40-year-old, adding that "life goes on in Lebanon... but always with a looming state of anxiety."

- Khan Yunis operation -

The Hamas attack on southern Israel that started the war resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,400 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.

Fighting has meanwhile raged on unabated in the besieged Gaza Strip, with the territory's civil defence agency saying on Tuesday that around 300 people had been killed in the southern city of Khan Yunis during an Israeli operation there that began on July 22.

"Since the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion of the eastern part of Khan Yunis province, the civil defence and medical teams have recovered approximately 300 bodies of martyrs, many of them decomposed," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

The military meanwhile said it had completed its operation in the Khan Yunis area, which had seen heavy fighting earlier this year, and had killed "over 150 terrorists".

burs-jsa/dcp

(W.Williams--TAG)