Lebanon Hamas and Hezbollah in limited fire across border

Hamas's armed wing, al-Qassam brigades, said its fighters in southern Lebanon were behind the shelling of the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, where four rockets landed in an industrial area, injuring two people and damaging buildings.

- Peter Beaumont

In a second barrage, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group, said it had simultaneously attacked 19 positions in Israel yesterday evening in the latest escalation on Israel's northern border.

The exchanges yesterday came before a speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut scheduled for today that will be closely watched in Israel and across the region. Hezbollah, like Hamas, is a proxy of Iran.

The strikes came after Hezbollah said it had used two drones packed with explosives to attack an Israeli army command position in the disputed Shebaa Farms area on the Lebanese-Israeli border earlier in the day.

It is the first time Hezbollah has admitted to carrying out an attack against Israeli forces using such drones, and comes a few days after the Iran-backed group said for the first time it had used a surface-to-air missile against an Israeli drone. In a statement, Hezbollah said the drones, filled with "a large quantity of explosives", had attacked the Israeli battalion in the Shebaa Farms area and hit their targets.

Israel has held the Shebaa Farms, comprising 15 sq miles of land, since the 1967 war, but Syria and Lebanon claim the area belongs to Lebanon.