AMMAN – Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said it carried out a drone attack on March 11 against an Israeli air defence outpost across the border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

It said the rare attack, in which it deployed four drones, hit the target with “accuracy” in what it said was another operation in support of Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.

The Iran-aligned Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire along Lebanon’s southern border since October, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which is at war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas killed 1,200 people and seized 253 hostages on Oct 7, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has retaliated by launching an air and ground assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 31,000 people, the health authorities in Gaza say.

Israeli strikes had been mostly limited to the southern border region of Lebanon, although they have edged farther north in recent weeks.

Hezbollah in February said it fired rockets against the same target in the Golan Heights.

The armed group has used surface-to-air missiles on several occasions since Oct 7 to target Israeli aircraft. It has also launched its own surveillance drones into northern Israel.

The Israeli military said two hostile aerial targets crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory in the northern Golan area and “fell in open areas”.

It also said Israeli warplanes struck a Hezbollah military site in the border area of Jibbain and overnight hit another Hezbollah outpost in the Taybeh area.

Three fighters of the Lebanese Islamist militant group Jamaa Islamiya, an ally of Hezbollah, who were killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon on March 10, were buried the following day, the group said.

More than 60 civilians have been killed in Israeli shelling on Lebanon, along with more than 200 Hezbollah fighters, according to medical and security sources. REUTERS