DUBAI (Reuters) – An Israeli shell killed the mayor of a Lebanese village on Monday, a relative and Lebanon’s National News Agency said, as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah kept up hostilities ignited by the war in Gaza.
Hussein Mansour was killed in his home in the village of Taybeh a few kilometres (miles) from the border with Israel, the relative Mohamed Mansour told Reuters. The shell which struck him did not explode, the National News Agency said.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Violence escalated at Lebanon’s border with Israel on Sunday, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah launching explosive drones and powerful missiles at Israeli positions, and Israeli air strikes rocking several towns and villages in south Lebanon.
After a Hezbollah official said on Sunday that Israel had escalated its attacks in Lebanon, an Israeli government spokesperson accused Hezbollah of “escalating its aggression”.
“We will respond firmly to any continued aggression and we repeat that Israel is not interested in a two-front war but if Hezbollah decides to drag Israel into a full-scale war, the consequences will be severe for Hezbollah and for the state of Lebanon,” government spokesperson Eylon Levy said.
(Reporting by Jana Choukeir in Dubai and Maayan Lubell and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
