Israeli airstrikes killed at least five people in southern Lebanon on Friday, Lebanese authorities reported, the latest breach of a nearly month-old ceasefire with Hezbollah. Hours later, the Iran-backed militant group fired a salvo of rockets toward northern Israel that the Israeli military said landed in open areas without inflicting casualties.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an airstrike on the village of Toura, near the port city of Tyre, killed four people and wounded eight. The state-run National News Agency reported a separate strike near the southeastern village of Kfar Chouba killed a paramedic with the Lebanese Civil Defense. The Israeli army had issued evacuation warnings for six villages in Tyre province, including Toura, earlier Friday.
Hezbollah’s rocket fire in the early afternoon was largely ineffective. The Israeli military said it shot down one rocket and the rest struck uninhabited areas, causing no injuries.
The violence compounds the strain on the ceasefire declared in Washington on April 17 and later extended. Despite the truce, exchanges have continued — Lebanese officials reported an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs just two days earlier.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun met Friday with a visiting European Union delegation and urged European nations to pressure Israel to abide by the ceasefire and stop “detonating and bulldozing” homes in villages under Israeli occupation in the south, according to a statement from his office. Aoun said Lebanon remains committed to the ceasefire as a step toward broader negotiations aimed at ending the current conditions.
After the meeting, EU Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib told reporters that both Israel and Hezbollah are taking Lebanon “hostage. Hezbollah should stop its attacks and disarm, and Israel should put limits to its airstrikes that target and have targeted humanitarian centers.”
Aoun later met with Simon Karam, the head of the Lebanese delegation to next week’s direct talks with Israel in Washington. The negotiations, the first between the two countries in more than three decades, are expected to take place Thursday and Friday.
Israel’s military said Thursday it had killed Ahmed Balout, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, along with two other militants. Hezbollah did not immediately comment. Israel also said it had killed more than 85 Hezbollah militants and struck 180 sites linked to the group over the past week, without providing evidence.
The current round of fighting began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer. Israel responded with hundreds of airstrikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, capturing dozens of towns and villages along the border. The two countries have formally been in a state of war since Israel’s founding in 1948.