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Hezbollah answers Israeli attack

Al-Monitor reports on the ground from the site of Wednesday's confrontation.
A wounded Israeli soldier lies on a stretcher near Israel's border with Lebanon January 28, 2015. The threat of a full-blown conflict between Israel and Hezbollah increased on Wednesday after the Lebanese militant group fired a missile at an Israeli army vehicle along the frontier and wounded seven soldiers, the biggest escalation since a 2006 war. REUTERS/JINIPIX (ISRAEL - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) ISRAEL OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN ISRAEL - RTR4NB95

The situation in south Lebanon was calm, but with a touch of nervousness in the air the morning of Jan. 28, when six missiles broke the silence. Everyone had been waiting for this moment to arrive. Ten days of waiting had come to an end for Israel, as Hezbollah exacted revenge for the Jan. 18 missile strike near Quneitra, in the Golan Heights, in which commanders and an Iranian general were killed.

Thus, south Lebanon became a war zone, the whole area shaking as shells rained down on the valleys and the surrounding mountains. It was a one-sided war, as Hezbollah had already completed its mission: a strike on two Israeli military vehicles, killing at least two soldiers and wounding seven. People on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border are left wondering where events were headed.

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