BICOM

Five Katyusha rockets were fired towards Israel from southern Lebanon early yesterday morning, with two landing near the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.

The rockets were fired at around 7.30am and although local residents reported seeing smoke rising nearby, no injuries or damage was reported. Kiryat Shmona Mayor Nissim Malka told Channel Two, “We woke up to the sounds of rockets this morning,” but said that local residents were going about their daily business as normal.

The IDF responded swiftly, with Reuters reporting that Israel’s military fired around twenty artillery shells at the source of fire in Lebanon, although no casualties or damage was reported. Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon confirmed the response commenting, “We will not tolerate fire from Lebanon on our territory” and that “if necessary” the response will be “even tougher” in future.

No group has taken responsibility for the Katyusha attack. Haaretz’s Amos Harel suggests a Sunni Jihadist faction could have launched the rockets. However, Hezbollah controls large swaths of southern Lebanon and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused them yesterday of a “double war crime under the patronage of the Lebanese government and army, who do nothing” while “Hezbollah deploys thousands of rockets and missiles among the civilian population.” Netanyahu added “We will not allow a drizzle [of rockets] and we will respond strongly.”

Major-General Paolo Serra, commander of the peacekeeping United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon pledged, “We will spare no efforts” to identify the perpetrators.

Yesterday’s incident comes two weeks after 31-year-old Israeli soldier Shlomi Cohen was shot dead by a Lebanese sniper  who opened fire on his vehicle patrolling the Israel-Lebanon border.  Israel’s border with Lebanon has been relatively calm since a month-long war in 2006 with Hezbollah, after it had fired rockets deep into Israel. Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border returned fire after shots were fired at them. Meanwhile, in August four Israeli soldiers were wounded in an explosion amid a cross-border operation.