A barrage of 30 rockets hit the town and its environs after an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed seven terrorists Tuesday night.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A Hezbollah rocket killed a 25-year-old man in Kiryat Shmona and lightly wounded another during a heavy aerial barrage from the Lebanese terror group Wednesday morning.
Zahar Bashara, a Druze from the Golan Heights village of Ein Kaniya, had been working in a factory in the town’s industrial zone which suffered a direct hit, according to Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency service.
When medics arrived on the scene they found him trapped in the wreckage but there was nothing they could do but confirm Bashara’s death.
“Large forces of the IDF, police and fire brigade arrived at the scene and after complex rescue operations, a 25-year-old laborer was removed from the scene, unconsciousness, without a pulse and not breathing, with severe multi-system trauma and we had to pronounce him dead on the spot,” said MDA paramedics Orli Ben Simon and Slav Snoff, who had arrived after hearing the rocket explosions and seeing heavy smoke rising from the factory.
The lightly injured man was hurt when a rocket struck a commercial building in the area.
A total of 30 rockets were launched from southern Lebanon at the town, and other settlements in the Upper Galilee, causing damage to buildings and vehicles in addition to the loss of life.
“Officers and bomb disposal experts … are currently isolating the debris sites and scanning for additional remnants to eliminate any further risk to the public,” said the Israel Police in a statement following the attack.
Hezbollah confirmed that their attack came in retaliation for an IDF airstrike on a building in the southern Lebanon town of Habbariyeh Tuesday night.
Seven terrorists were eliminated in the airstrike.
An IDF spokesman said that the air force had “liquidated a senior member of Jemaah Islamiyah and other terrorists [from the group] who were in the building.”
The commander had promoted attacks against Israel, the IDF stated.
Jemaah Islamiyah is a Sunni Islamist extremist group founded in Indonesia and inspired by the jihadist ideology of al-Qaida, according to Western intelligence agencies.
The IDF also killed three Hezbollah terrorists earlier Tuesday, in airstrikes deeper into Lebanon than Israel has attacked so far in the war.
In the bombing north of Hezbollah’s stronghold of Baalbek, the jets hit a military site used by Hezbollah’s air units, the army said.
“An aircraft landing pad and a number of other military structures of the terrorist organization were attacked in the compound,” said the IDF spokesman.
This air raid came in response to Hezbollah previously launching a UAV at an Israeli air force base near Meron and a barrage of some 60 rockets aimed at northern settlements.