BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, March 9 (Reuters) - Hezbollah said on Monday its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in eastern Lebanon during an Israeli airborne raid overnight, in what would be the second such operation in the area in recent days, as the war between Israel and the Iran-backed group entered a second week.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military had no immediate comment when asked about the Hezbollah statement.
A Hezbollah statement said its fighters "confronted the helicopters and the infiltrating forces with appropriate weapons".
Lebanon was pulled into the regional war when Hezbollah, founded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982, opened fire to avenge the killing of Iran's former supreme leader, igniting a new Israeli offensive against the group.
The Israeli military kept up its airstrikes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut on Monday, sending plumes of smoke across the city. It reiterated warnings to its residents to leave, and announced it would act against a Hezbollah financial institution, Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
Nearly 400 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since March 2, Lebanon's health ministry reported on Sunday, including at least 83 children and 42 women. The toll does not otherwise distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel's military announced on Sunday that two Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon, the first casualties in the Israeli army since the war began.
WIDENING TARGETS
In its statement, Hezbollah said its fighters had observed 15 helicopters flying over eastern Lebanon just after midnight, dropping Israeli troops who were observed approaching Lebanese territory from an area on the Syrian side of the border.
Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley region is one of the Shi'ite Muslim group's political and security strongholds.
The Israeli military carried out an airborne raid in the same area, near the village of Nabi Chit, overnight Friday-Saturday. Lebanon's health ministry said 41 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the Nabi Chit area on Saturday.
The Israeli military said that raid was an operation to seek the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator missing in Lebanon since 1986 but no findings related to him were recovered.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have fled their homes since the start of the war, pouring out of the predominantly Shi'ite Muslim southern Lebanon, and the southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh.
Israel has also struck outside those areas.
On Sunday, an Israeli drone strike hit a hotel in Beirut's seafront Rouche district. The Israeli military said the strike killed five senior commanders of what it described as the Lebanon Corps of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.
The Israeli military has sent more troops into southern Lebanon since the start of the war, establishing what it described as forward defensive positions to guard against Hezbollah attacks into Israel.
Israel had kept soldiers at five positions in southern Lebanon since a war with Hezbollah in 2024.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell and Steven Scheer in Jerusalem; Abdelaziz Boumzar, Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Tala Ramadan and Ahmed Elimam in Dubai; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Ros Russell)
