At least five people were killed shortly before midnight in Israeli shelling of a tanker convoy entering Lebanon from neighboring Syria, a non-governmental organization and a military source said, amid escalating violence.

Since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas on October 7, the powerful Lebanese faction Hezbollah has been exchanging fire virtually daily with the Israeli army in support of its ally, the Palestinian Islamist movement.

The bombing of the tankers is part of an intensification of hostilities in recent weeks.

“Three Syrians working with Hezbollah and two Lebanese were killed in an Israeli shelling of a tanker convoy entering Lebanon on the border with Syria on the road between Hermel and Qusheir,” the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP. Rami Abdel Rahman.

This NGO, based in Britain and with a wide network of sources in war-torn Syria, added that five more people were injured and that two more were missing.

At the same time, the Syrian anti-aircraft defense was activated to counter the attack, always according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“At least three members of Hezbollah were killed by nine Israeli missiles that targeted a convoy of oil tankers,” a military source told AFP earlier.

He added that a “property” was also targeted in Lebanon’s Hermel governorate, about 140 kilometers from the border with Israel, near the Syrian community of Haus al-Sayed Ali, “totally destroying it.”

The Shiite movement has developed strong forces on both sides of the Lebanon-Syria border, particularly in Qusheir governorate, where Hezbollah first revealed its involvement with the Syrian regime in 2013.

On February 29, a Hezbollah fighter was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Qusheir Governorate.

A few hours before last night’s bombings, the movement, which is close to Iran, announced that it had shot down yet another Israeli Hermes UAV over Lebanon. This is the fifth unmanned aerial vehicle of its type (Elbit Systems) says it has shot down since February.

Hezbollah, which has increasingly resorted to using its own one-way drones to evade Israeli radars, also claimed responsibility for a series of attacks yesterday, including one using “swarms of drones” against an Israeli position in the Israeli-occupied highlands of the Golan.

Such attacks caused widespread fires last week in northern Israel and the Golan Heights.

Israel, for its part, has escalated airstrikes targeting Shiite party fighters deeper and deeper into Lebanese territory, particularly in the Baalbek region, a Hezbollah stronghold in the eastern part of the country.

The more than eight months of hostilities have killed at least 462 people in Lebanon, including some 90 civilians, as well as nearly 300 Hezbollah fighters, according to an AFP tally.

At least 24 other Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Syrian soil since October 7.