Published: 16:08, July 29, 2024 | Updated: 21:07, July 29, 2024
Official: Israel to launch 'painful' but 'limited' strike against Hezbollah
By Agencies
Smoke billows following an Israeli airstrike in the southern Lebanese border village of Chihine on July 28, 2024. (PHOTO / AFP)

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM - Israel has decided to launch "a painful strike" against Hezbollah, but in a limited scope that will not "trigger a full-fledged regional war," an Israeli government official confirmed to Xinhua on Monday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Israel was preparing to launch "a limited" retaliation, after a rocket attack on Saturday killed 12 children and youth in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

Israel accuses Hezbollah of firing the rocket while the Lebanese group and political party has denied any involvement.

ALSO READ: Israel vows retaliation after 12 children killed in Golan rocket attack

The source said that the response could trigger "several days" of intensive fighting and that Israel was preparing for such a scenario.

According to a statement issued on Sunday night following a meeting of Israel's security cabinet, the ministers had granted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant the authority "to decide on the manner of the response against Hezbollah, and its timing."

The statement did not specify how Israel would respond to the attack.

On Monday, an Israeli drone strike killed two people and wounded three more in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese civil defense said, as Lebanon braced for Israeli retaliation for the rocket strike on the Golan Heights.

ALSO READ: Israel reviews attack plan against Lebanon's Hezbollah over deadly rocket strike

Israel's largest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted unnamed officials as saying the response would be "limited but significant".

The report said options for retaliation ranged from a limited but "photogenic" attack on infrastructure including bridges, power plants and ports, to hitting Hezbollah weapons depots or targeting high-level Hezbollah commanders.

Elders and mourners carry the coffin of Guevara Ibrahim, 11, killed in a reported strike from Lebanon two days earlier, during his funeral in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan on July 29, 2024. (PHOTO / AFP)

Monday's Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon wounded three people including an infant, an official in the Lebanese civil defense told Reuters. The rescue service did not say whether the dead were fighters or civilians.

The Israeli military said its air defenses downed a drone which crossed from Lebanon into the area of Western Galilee on Monday.

Flights at Beirut's international airport have been cancelled or delayed as airlines responded to the possibility of an Israeli response.

ALSO READ: Mideast countries warn against escalation after Golan Heights attack

Both Israel and Hezbollah have appeared at pains to avoid a full-scale war since they began trading blows in October in a conflict ignited by the Gaza war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday he does not want to see an escalation of conflict on Israel's northern border and reiterated US support for Israel.

"I emphasize (Israel's) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they're able to do that," Blinken said during a news conference in Tokyo. "But we also don't want to see the conflict escalate. We don't want to see it spread."

Hezbollah has denied firing the rocket that killed the youngsters but it said at the time it had fired a missile against a military target on the Golan Heights, a border area Israel seized from Syria after the 1967 Middle East war and has since annexed in a move not generally recognized internationally.