Israel to evacuate residents of town near Lebanon border after flare-up

JERUSALEM - Israel said on Friday it would evacuate more than 20,000 residents from a northern city, after days of clashes with Hezbollah fighters in the area.

Kiryat Shmona is one of the biggest towns on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen constant, but so far limited, clashes since a war in Gaza erupted two weeks ago.

But a heavy cross-border exchange of fire occurred on Thursday. The Lebanese army said a journalist was killed by Israeli gunfire in an area across the border from Kiryat Shmona.

Israel has already declared some areas along the frontier as closed military zones and forced residents to move away.

But this is the largest evacuation from the hills of the eastern Galilee region.

Spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Daniel Hagari said: “This kind of evacuation, which has already been done in a number of towns on the northern border, allows the IDF to expand its operational freedom to act against the Hezbollah terrorist organisation.”

Persistent violence along the Israel-Lebanon border has raised fears that fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza could spiral into a broader, regional conflict.

Israel’s military said one of its drones “struck a terrorist in Lebanese territory” overnight. It also said it targeted Hezbollah assets in response to rockets fired from Lebanon.

Evacuees from Kiryat Shmona will be put up in state-subsidised guest houses, Israel’s Defence Ministry said.

They will join tens of thousands of Israelis who have already left their homes near the southern Gaza border.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has said it has documented more than 20 journalists killed since the start of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

It said it was investigating reports of other journalists killed, injured and reported missing.

The latest incident on the Israel-Lebanon border came nearly a week after Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s army blamed Israel and Israel’s military says it is reviewing the case.

Reuters has called on Israel to conduct a “thorough, swift and transparent investigation”.

The Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah movement was founded in southern Lebanon in 1982.

It is Lebanon’s only armed faction that did not disarm after the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990.

Hezbollah last fought a major conflict with Israel in 2006.

That war left more than 1,200 dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 160 in Israel, mostly soldiers, in a conflict that left deep scars and the border bristling with guns. REUTERS, AFP