At least four people, including a first aid worker, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Friday, Hezbollah and its affiliates said, with the Shiite militant group saying it retaliated by firing rockets at Israel.

Since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, Hezbollah, a faction loyal to Iran and an ally of Hamas, has been exchanging fire with the Israeli military on a daily basis.

“An Israeli drone targeted an ambulance (…) A member of the first aid team was killed and another injured” in Nakura, a community on the border with Israel, the operations center of the Islamic Health Committee, an organization linked to Hezbollah, told AFP.

Lebanon’s official news agency ANI also reported that “an Israeli drone targeted an ambulance of the Islamic Health Committee in Nakura.”

The Islamic Health Committee later told AFP that a woman had been killed and four others wounded in an Israeli airstrike in the town of Adlun, 30 kilometers from the border. According to ANI, an Israeli drone hit a house which was “totally destroyed”.

In a statement, the Israeli army announced that its aircraft hit a “military infrastructure” in Nakura, where “terrorist cell activity was detected”. He also talked about intercepting a drone coming from Lebanon.

Hezbollah said its members had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at northern Israel “in retaliation for the attack” in Nakura, while it also claimed responsibility for other attacks on Friday, mostly by drones and rockets.

He emphasized that two of its fighters were killed, without specifying where. A source close to Hezbollah said one of the victims was killed in a shelling in Ain Qana, about 45 kilometers from the border with Israel.

The UN humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, said he was “shocked” that “an ambulance was targeted”. “Twenty health workers have lost their lives since October 8,” he underlined via X.

In nearly eight months of hostilities, about 450 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also more than 80 civilians, according to an AFP tally. The victims include twenty doctors, nurses and paramedics, among them ten employees of the Islamic Health Committee.

On the other hand, 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed since the exchange of fire began, according to Israeli authorities.

In late March, the UN branded “unacceptable” attacks since the outbreak of fighting against health workers in Lebanon, many of which are linked to political factions.

On Monday, a strike attributed to Israel by Lebanese media targeted a motorcycle in front of a hospital run by the Islamic Health Committee in Bid Jbail, southern Lebanon. Two civilians were killed, according to the hospital director.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that it has submitted a complaint to the UN Security Council against Israel, which concerns a May bombing targeting a vehicle that injured students on a passing bus.

According to a source close to Hezbollah, one of its fighters was killed in the attack.

The ministry called the raid a “violation of international humanitarian law” and called on the Security Council to “condemn Israel’s direct, deliberate and repeated attacks against civilians.”

In a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday — for the first time — that his faction’s fighters are capable of penetrating northern Israel, but have not yet done so.