Hezbollah says clashing with Israeli troops in Lebanon border village

BEIRUT: Hezbollah said its fighters were clashing at close range with Israeli troops in a south Lebanon border village on Thursday, weeks after Israel said it launched ground operations against the Iran-backed group.

Hezbollah fighters were engaged in “heavy clashes in the village of Aita al-Shaab” at close range, the Shiite Muslim movement said in a statement, adding that fighters hit a Merkava tank that came to assist the Israeli troops.

A short time earlier, Hezbollah said its fighters had “destroyed” another Israeli tank in the same village.

The group also said its fighters attacked Israeli troops near the border village of Aitarun, after saying a day earlier they repelled soldiers attempting to infiltrate in the area.

After nearly a year of war with Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon last month, vowing to secure its northern border under fire from Hezbollah.

It has ramped up air strikes on the group’s strongholds and sent in ground troops to south Lebanon, in a war that has displaced more than a million people and killed at least 1,580, according to Lebanese authorities.

Hezbollah on Wednesday said the Israeli army “has not been able to fully establish its control or completely occupy any village” in southern Lebanon.

Footage last week showed an Israeli flag flying over Aita al-Shaab.

A source close to Hezbollah said the village had come under some of the heaviest Israeli fire in a year of confrontations, and also denied Israeli troops had managed to establish positions inside Lebanon.

On Monday, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the Israeli army blew up houses in Aita al-Shaab, while Hezbollah said its fighters launched “a rocket salvo” at Israeli enemy soldiers near the municipality.

Broadcaster Al Jazeera showed footage of Israeli tanks on the village’s outskirts.

Last week, Hezbollah also said its fighters were battling Israeli troops in Aita al-Shaab.

It was across the border from the village that Hezbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid in July 2006, provoking a devastating month-long war that killed around 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 in Israel, most of them soldiers.

Aita al-Shaab was heavily damaged in the 2006 conflict.