(Reuters) – A mortar fired from Lebanon slammed into a northern Israeli community on Thursday, an Israeli military source and witnesses said.Witnesses said the mortar struck a chicken coop, causing some damage but no casualties. An Israeli military source said that troops, investigating an explosion in Margaliot where smoke was seen rising, found a mortar had been fired from neighboring Lebanon. In Beirut in Lebanon, a spokesman for Hizbollah, a Shi’ite guerrilla group, said it had no information on the attack. Hizbollah was instrumental in ending Israel’s 22-year military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. It has since then seldom targeted Israeli civilian targets, but has clashed periodically with the Israeli military, mainly in a border area known as Shebaa Farms. The most recent lethal clash there was on June 30 when Israel said it killed a Hizbollah fighter in a helicopter strike near Kfar Shouba, a day after Hizbollah mortar and gunfire killed an Israeli officer in the Shebaa Farms area.
On Wednesday, Israel killed five Palestinians in a West Bank gunbattle and militant groups vowed to avenge the killings.

Israel said it had targeted militants involved in suicide bomb attacks, but Palestinians said only two of those killed were militants and three others were unarmed teenagers.