Lebanon's state-run National News Agency says Israeli warplanes struck a PFLP-GC base in a village in the Bekaa Valley.
Israeli jets have attacked a Palestinian base in
eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, according to Lebanon's state-run National News
Agency.
The report says there were three attacks early on Monday,
minutes apart, that struck a base for a Syrian- backed group known as the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), an
ally of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the
strike, which the agency said hit near the Lebanese village of Qusaya in the
eastern Bekaa Valley.
Air
raids by Israel against Palestinian factions in Lebanon, such as this one, have
been rare in the past years.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the
attack against the PFLP-GC base took place near the border with Syria, in
very "rugged terrain".
"It's [the area] believed to be made up of tunnels,
linking both countries together," Khodr said.
The attack comes amid heightened regional tensions and a day
after alleged Israeli drones crashed in the southern suburb of
Beirut, prompting a strong reaction from the leader
of Hezbollah movement.
In a speech hours after one of the drones crashed in the
Lebanese capital, Hassan Nasrallah said the Israeli drones were on a
"suicide mission".
"Hezbollah will not allow such an aggression," he
said in a televised address on Sunday. "The time when Israeli aircraft
come and bombard parts of Lebanon is over."
Nasrallah also pledged
to retaliate to an Israeli air attack inside Syria that took place late on
Saturday, which he said killed two Hezbollah members.
Later
on Sunday, Iraq's powerful Hashd al-Shaabi force, or Popular
Mobilisation Forces(PMF), blamed Israel for carrying out a
deadly drone attack close to the border with Syria.
The
PMF is mostly comprised of Shia Muslim fighters and has received Iranian
training and advice, but operates officially under Iraq's armed forces and uses
military unit names.
Israel
has carried out hundreds of attacks against Iranian forces and their allies in
neighbouring Syria since the beginning of the country's civil war in
2011, saying it won't tolerate a permanent Iranian presence there or the
transfer of advanced weapons to theHezbollah movement.
Al Jazeera's Khodr said the
latest attack is a message to Hezbollah more than the PFLP-GC command since it
came "just hours" after Nasrallah pledged to down any Israeli drone
that violates Lebanese airspace.
Hezbollah
and Israel fought a month-long war in 2006. The volatile border between the two
countries, which remain technically in a state of war, has been mostly calm
since that conflict.
