BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah said Friday it had fired a barrage of rockets at Israeli positions in occupied Shebaa Farms in retaliation for the Zionist regime's airstrikes on southern Lebanon a day earlier.
In a statement, Hezbollah said it hit “open fields” near Israeli positions at 11:15 a.m. local time Friday, using "dozens" of 122-caliber rockets.
Lebanon's Al Mayadeen television said at least 20 rockets were fired at the occupying regime's military positions. Al-Minar TV said a number of the rockets targeted the Douf military base.
Hezbollah, which in recent years has been fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad in the neighboring country war against foreign-backed terrorists, named Friday's operation after two of its fighters who were martyred by Israeli fire.
Ali Mohsen was martyred killed in July last year in an Israeli airstrike near the Syrian capital Damascus. Muhammad Tahhan was shot dead by Zionist troops along the Lebanese border in May during a protest in support of Gaza during this year’s Israeli war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
A Lebanese security source said the rockets were launched from the area of Al-Arqoub, near the Lebanese town of Shebaa.
Air raid sirens sounded in the Upper Galilee, and in the Golan Heights, part of the territory the Zionist regime of Israel occupied in 1967.
Israeli media said residents of settlements in the north of the occupied territories had been asked to stay in shelters.
Following the retaliatory rocket attack, Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett and the regime’s war minister Benny Gantz held an emergency session amid reports of a massive number of sorties conducted by Israeli warplanes over southern Lebanon.
According to Al Jazeera, the Zionist military fired phosphorus bombs at Lebanese territories around the Kafr Shuba hills near the border, causing fire in nearby fields.
The Israeli military confirmed that it had hit areas in southern Lebanon with artillery fire.
The development came after Zionist jets struck what the regime's military claimed were rocket launch sites in Lebanon.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said the Israeli airstrikes were the first targeting villages since 2006 and showed an escalation in its “aggressive intent” towards his country.
Aoun also said the strikes were a direct threat to the security and stability of southern Lebanon and violated UN Security Council resolutions.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said, "The Israeli entity only understands the language of resistance."