The IDF fired artillery shells into southern Lebanon after Hezbollah exploded a large roadside bomb targeting the IDF along the Lebanon-Israel border in the western Har Dov section.
Two armored IDF vehicles, including a D-9, were clearing a road in the area at the time when the roadside bomb first exploded nearby.
No IDF soldiers were injured in the attack.
Hezbollah are trying to use the heavy fog for cover to lay bombs along the border, and took credit for the explosion.
Lebanese sources are saying that Israel fired back on the Sheba farms region as well as a Lebanese army position, and there are injuries in the Sheba farms region.
Israeli farmers along the border have been moved back, and the blasts from the explosion could be heard by Israeli residents of the Galilee causing the local regional council to evacuate Har Ve’Guy school in Kibbutz Dafna located in the Upper Galilee. The evacuation, however, was not carried out per instructions or recommendations of the IDF. No additional emergency instructions have been ordered for the civilian population at this point.
he incident took place two weeks after Israel reportedly assassinated Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist who was released by Israel as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. The IDF has also been conducting a series of controlled explosions in the area in order to prevent Hezbollah from exploiting the stormy weather in an effort to exact revenge for Kuntar’s death.
Since Kuntar’s assassination mid-December, Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah has promised to exact such revenge. “The blood of Samir Kuntar continues to force the enemy to hide in tunnels along the entire border. They wait and we wait. They are scared. The snow has now arrived and the pressure on them is even greater. They are even more trapped in their tunnels. Our response, God willing, shall arrive,” Nasrallah said this week.
Content from TPS was used in this report.
Correction/Update: Hezbollah did not shoot an anti-tank missile during the attack as was originally reported.