The Israeli army announced yesterday Saturday that it has hit thousands of targets, positions and installations of the Shiite movement Hezbollah, both in Lebanon and in Syria, after the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip broke out in early October.

“We attacked Hezbollah infrastructure in Syria” after October 7, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a press conference. They hit “over 50 targets” by ground and air means, he said, although Israel rarely comments publicly on its operations inside Syrian territory.

He also referred to strikes against “more than 3,400 targets”, Hezbollah installations and positions, “all over southern Lebanon”, assuring that more than 200 “terrorists and their commanders” had been killed during this period.

AFP notes that it was unable to independently verify any of these claims.

Since the day after the unprecedented attack by the military arm of Hamas in southern sectors of Israeli territory, the trigger of the war in the Gaza Strip, exchanges of fire have been practically daily between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an armed movement close to Iran, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hamas.

Hezbollah often says it targets Israeli army positions in areas of the border in a show of support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel retaliates by hitting targets in southern Lebanon.

In nearly four months, 218 people — mostly Hezbollah fighters, but also civilians and journalists — have been killed in southern Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, the lives of fifteen people, nine military and six civilians, have been lost, according to the army.