A sudden Israeli drone strike hit a car in the village of Kunin in southern Lebanon on Saturday, killing one man, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. This comes despite the ceasefire that was brokered last November to halt over a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah.
A day earlier, Israel carried out air raids across south Lebanon, killing a woman in Nabatiyeh and leaving 25 others wounded. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that the woman died when an Israeli drone targeted an apartment in the city.
Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee took to social media to insist that no civilian buildings were intentionally hit. He claimed that the strike impacted a site storing rockets in a defense array, causing an unintentional explosion.
The Friday raids featured a "wave of successive heavy strikes" in the Nabatiyeh region, injuring seven people, according to the NNA. The Israeli military said it had "identified rehabilitation attempts made by Hezbollah beforehand and struck terror infrastructure sites in the area."
Under the terms of the November ceasefire deal, Israel was required to fully withdraw troops from southern Lebanon but has maintained forces at five strategic locations. Meanwhile, Hezbollah was supposed to pull its fighters back north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers from the border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.
Analysts warn that these renewed strikes threaten to unravel the fragile calm, testing the limits of a ceasefire that both sides agreed to but have struggled to fully respect. Global citizens and policymakers will watch closely to see if tensions escalate or new diplomatic moves emerge.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
