A Hezbollah attack wounds 14 Israeli soldiers in a border village

The Lebanese Hezbollah group claimed responsibility for a cross-border drone and missile attack in northern Israel on Wednesday that the Israeli military said injured 14 soldiers, six of them in serious condition.

This was one of the most devastating attacks in recent months by Hezbollah, Iran's most powerful regional proxy, in its ongoing clashes with Israel. The intensity of the clashes escalated following Israel's killing of two Hezbollah leaders. There are growing fears of a broader conflict between Israel and Tehran, which launched a large-scale air attack on Israel over the weekend.

Hezbollah said its attack on the Israeli border Bedouin village of Arab al-Aramsha was in response to Israeli air strikes the previous day, which the Israeli military said killed the leaders. Those strikes sparked a series of retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli military bases and barracks.

Hezbollah claimed that the target in the attack that occurred on Wednesday was an Israeli military reconnaissance unit. The army said that six soldiers were seriously injured, two were moderately injured, and six were slightly injured. It said it responded to the attack with strikes on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.

For more than six months, Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in an escalating cross-border conflict, sparked by the October 7 attack on Israel led by Hamas, another of Iran's proxy groups. The fighting has led to the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border, and in recent months Israeli strikes inside Lebanon have begun to creep into the country.

Aaron Puckerman, Jonathan Rees And Gabe Sobelman He contributed reporting from Jerusalem.