Israel steps up air strikes

Israeli air strikes hit a Palestinian group’s compound in Lebanon near the border with Syria early on Sunday, the latest in a series of moves against Iran’s allies in the Middle East.

There were “three hostile strikes” by drones after midnight in Lebanon’s mountains near Qusaya town, “where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command has military posts”, the staterun NNA news agency reported. The group is loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

The Israeli army and Lebanese authorities have yet to comment. A day earlier, two drones, which the Lebanese army and the Iran-backed Hizbollah group said were Israeli, crashed in the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs of Beirut.

One of the two drones was booby-trapped and exploded after hitting a Hizbollah media office, the group’s spokesman, Mohammed Afif, said on Sunday.