Rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel after killing of top Hezbollah leader

Three rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel's northwestern region Sunday, hours following the apparent assassination of a top Lebanese Hezbollah military leader.

The rockets were fired from the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre in retaliation against Israeli shelling on the southern towns of Qolaile and al-Mansouri, a source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity, adding that Israeli warplanes are still carrying mock raids over the region.

The Israeli military said the three rockets exploded in an open territory in Western Galilee Sunday, with no damages or injuries reported. The Israeli Defense Forces said they are currently scouting the area for rocket remnants.

Lebanese media outlets reported that the IDF discharged artillery targeting southern Lebanon following the firing of the three rockets.

The rockets are the first of its kind in over a year, after the last major confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in 2006.

The rockets were launched several hours following media reports of the apparent Israeli assassination of Samir Kuntar in a Damascus suburb.

Kuntar was a military commander in the Lebanese Hezbollah group. Hezbollah officials accused Israel for the attack which reportedly killed eight other people.

Israel did not officially claim responsibility for the attack, though Israeli ministers commended Kuntar's death.

Kuntar was a Lebanese Druze and a member of the militant Palestine Liberation Front organization, and later became a top Hezbollah official.

He spent nearly 30 years in an Israeli prison for the murder of four Israelis in 1979, including a four-year-old girl and her father.

He was released in 2008, in exchange for bodies of two Israeli soldiers who were killed by Hezbollah in 2006.

Israeli pundits believed that Sunday's rockets were not fired by Hezbollah but rather by Palestinian militant organizations located in southern Lebanon, with Hezbollah's approval, however.

The last time rockets hit the northwest area of Western Galilee was in July 2014, during Israel's military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, known as Operation Protective Edge.

Several airstrikes against Syria in recent years were attributed to Israel, whose official policy is non-intervention in the country's ongoing civil war.

Israeli officials did hint, however, that they would act if Israel's security interests were threatened. Endit