Nine people have been killed, including three children, and 11 injured in two Israeli airstrikes on south Lebanon, the worst toll since deals in June brought a lull in hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah,
The Guardian reports.
Israeli warplanes bombed a home on the outskirts of the village of Ansar in southern Lebanon, killing seven people and flattening the building early on Saturday morning. Rescue services were working at the site to try to find survivors and locate bodies.
Another airstrike hours later on a home in the town of Deir al-Zahrani killed two, wounded nine and covered the streets in rubble and smoke. An Israeli drone also targeted a motorcycle in the nearby city of Nabatieh, but it was unclear if the driver was killed.
The escalation came despite a June ceasefire in which most fighting between Israel and Hezbollah ended.
Residents of southern Lebanon wondered if the attacks signalled further escalation to come or if it was safe to stay in their homes. Neither village was in Israel’s self-declared “security zone” – a 231-square-mile area occupied by its forces.
The roads out of Nabatieh and the surrounding villages were choked with traffic after the strikes as people fled north in search of safety.
The Israeli military spokesperson, Ella Waweya, said Israel had attacked “Hezbollah infrastructure” in the Ansar and Nabatieh area in response to the group’s fighters attacking soldiers in the Ali Taher area.
Ali Taher is a hill where the Israeli military says large underground Hezbollah command and control centres are located, and it has been shelling the area for months.
The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, condemned the Israeli attacks, calling them “extremely dangerous” and said they undermined efforts to establish stability in the south.
He called on Israel to stop the escalation. “The seven martyrs of the Israeli strike on the town of Ansar were not ‘military infrastructure’ and the children and women killed were not military targets,” he said.
The latest round of fighting in Lebanon started after Hezbollah struck Israel with rockets on 2 March in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Israel responded with an aerial campaign and invasion that killed more than 4,300 people and occupied about 6% of the country’s territory.
