Hezbollah Retaliates against Israel for death of Jihad Mugniyeh

Israel’s military reports that two soldiers have been killed and another seven were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush on a military convoy near Mount Dov and Shebaa Farms Wednesday. Hezbollah fighters attacked the convoy with shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets. Additionally, Israeli army units stationed in Israeli communities were struck by artillery near Mount Hermon. These event comes in the wake of threats from Hezbollah and its Iranian patron, over retaliation for an Israeli airstrike last week which killed six Hezbollah members, and an Iranian IRGC general. Hezbollah has already claimed as much in an official statement, claiming the attack was launched by a group calling themselves “the heroic martyrs of Quneitra.” One of the anti-tank rounds fire, appears to have been labeled “Jihad Mugniyeh” after the Hezbollah leader killed in the attack. Mugniyeh was the son of the late terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyeh, who was killed in Damascus by a car bomb in 2008, widely believed to have been conducted by Israeli Mossad.

Israeli forces responded to the Hezbollah attack by firing  on Hezbollah artillery installations in southern Lebanon. Both Hezbollah and Israel are reportedly reluctant to escalate the conflict further, with Israeli officials cautious about the attacks drawing Israel into the Syrian war, and Hezbollah officials telling a Kuwaiti paper that they did not intend to retaliate against Israel from within Lebanese territory. Since Hezbollah’s increased involvement within Syria, Hezbollah has been at pains to present itself as a throughly Lebanese rather than as merely an Iranian proxy in order to maintain its grip within Lebanon.