About 200 Hezbollah fighters took part in military exercises ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has held military exercises near the country’s southern border with Israel as a show of its military might.
About 200 Hezbollah fighters used live ammunition and an attack drone to take part in exercises on Sunday in Aaramta, 20km (12 miles) north of the Israeli border.
The drills took place ahead of the anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 25, 2000. It was Hezbollah’s biggest demonstration of military might in years.
Hezbollah fighters conducted a simulated raid involving sniper and drone attacks against Israeli targets as part of the exercise. In another case they engaged in attacks across a mock border. The group displayed heavy and light weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons, rocket launchers and rocket-propelled grenades.
“If some people in the Zionist entity [Israel] dreaming of doing something stupid, … we will rain our precision missiles and all the weapons at our disposal,” senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine was quoted as saying by the news agency in Agence France-Presse.
The Israeli military, which sometimes conducts exercises simulating a war with Hezbollah, did not comment on the incident.
Elias Farhat, a retired Lebanese army general who is a researcher of military affairs, told The Associated Press that Hezbollah’s “symbolic show of force” was in response to recent developments in Gaza, where Israel killed 30 Palestinians and wounded more than 90 in airstrikes.
He said it could also be a response to the Israeli nationalist “flag march” on Thursday in occupied East Jerusalem.
Hezbollah-Israel relations
Hezbollah was founded in 1982 to oppose Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. It is the only Lebanese faction that kept its weapons after the country’s 1975-1990 civil war.
The Shia armed group justifies keeping its arsenal by saying they need to stop Israel.
Since a devastating 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has acted as a buffer between Beirut and Tel Aviv.
The peacekeeping mission was established in 1978 near the southern Lebanese border and monitored the withdrawal of Israeli forces in 2000. Although Lebanon and Israel have maintained a cautious calm since then, the border is still marked by clashes. battle.
In the latest flare-up, Israel launched rare strikes in southern Lebanon last month after rebels fired rockets into Israel, injuring two people.
Israel has also frequently targeted the position of Hezbollah and Iran in Syria, a key ally of the Shia group and Tehran.
