Israeli strikes kill nine in southern Lebanon village
Israeli air strikes on a residential building and a vehicle in Kfar Roummane killed nine, including a child and a paramedic, as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun warned the attacks jeopardised the US-brokered ceasefire.
Israeli air strikes on a village in southern Lebanon have killed at least nine people, according to the Lebanese health ministry, as the Israeli military intensifies its campaign in the border region despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreement. The first strike destroyed a three-storey residential building in Kfar Roummane, near the Israeli-occupied "security zone", killing eight people including a child and two women and injuring 11 others, among them four children. A second strike on a vehicle killed a paramedic and wounded two others, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the reports, but the Israeli foreign ministry accused Hezbollah of "repeated drone attacks" on its troops in occupied areas and of "attempting to rebuild its military capabilities in southern Lebanon," asserting that the Iran-backed group had violated the ceasefire. Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim armed group, has not commented on the latest strikes. The violence has prompted large numbers of residents to flee the area, with one resident telling the BBC she was packing to leave for the coastal city of Sidon for the sixth or seventh time, saying: "Now that they are targeting civilians, I don't want to weep for my children."
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the "dangerous escalation," warning it jeopardised the June ceasefire that was intended to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. He urged the international community to pressure Israel to halt the attacks. The trilateral framework agreed by Lebanon, Israel and the US calls for Hezbollah to disarm, Israeli forces to withdraw gradually from southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese army to deploy across the area. However, the latest strikes underscore the fragility of the truce, which has been under increasing strain following the broader regional war that drew in Lebanon on 2 March, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed Iran's supreme leader. At least 4,362 people have been killed in Lebanon during the conflict, according to the health ministry, whose figures do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israeli authorities report 44 of their own have been killed.