Hezbollah chief: Israel didn’t hit Hamas in Lebanon strikes

BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group on Friday claimed that Israel did not hit Hamas or Hezbollah targets in last week’s strikes on southern Lebanon.

The strikes last Friday in south Lebanon came a day after militants fired nearly three dozen rockets from there at Israel, wounding two people and causing some property damage. The Israeli military said it had targeted installations of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, in southern Lebanon.

Speaking at an a ceremony in Beirut marking “Quds Day,” or Jerusalem Day — an annual show of support for the Palestinians held on the last Friday of every Islamic holy month of Ramadan — Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah called the Israeli statements “a barefaced lie” and that “no Hezbollah or Hamas infrastructure was struck.”

Rather, he said, the Israelis hit “banana groves” and a water irrigation channel. There was no immediate comment from Israel.

While Israeli military officials have not said they hit any Hezbollah targets, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech Monday said Israel had targeted both Hamas and Hezbollah infrastructure. Nasrallah called this “the biggest lie.”

According to Associated Press reporters on the ground, several missiles fired by Israeli warplanes struck an open field in the town of Qalili, near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, close to the coastal southern city of Tyre.

Others struck a bridge and power transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and a farm on the outskirts of Rashidiyeh, killing several sheep. No human deaths were reported.

It could not be independently verified if any other locations were hit.

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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.