BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of the Hezbollah terror group on Friday derisively mocked Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon a week earlier, claiming that fighter jets only managed to strike banana fields and not Hamas or Hezbollah targets in retaliation for a volley of rockets on northern Israel.
The hour-long address by Hassan Nasrallah came after border tensions that had appeared to fade briefly flared again Friday, as IDF troops fired tear gas at several dozen Hezbollah supporters who gathered on the tense frontier between the countries and hurled stones at the Israeli side.
Speaking at a ceremony in Beirut marking “Quds Day,” or Jerusalem Day — an annual show of support for the Palestinians held on the last Friday of every Islamic holy month of Ramadan — Nasrallah called Israeli statements regarding retaliatory strikes “a barefaced lie” and that “no Hezbollah or Hamas infrastructure was struck.”
Israel merely hit some “banana groves” and a water irrigation channel, he claimed.
The IDF said last week that its counter-strikes had targeted “terrorist infrastructures belonging to Hamas” in the southern part of the country where Hamas has a strong presence in Palestinian refugee camps.
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