Lebanon health ministry: at least nine dead in Israeli strike

Copyright AFP/File Peter Zay

Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon killed nine people, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

The toll from the strike in the Nabatieh area is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging near-daily fire over their border after war in the Gaza Strip began in October.

International mediators have been trying to reach a Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants, which diplomats say could help to avert a wider war in which Lebanon would be on the front line.

The death toll from the latest strike included “a woman and her two children” and five other people were wounded, two critically, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s military, on its Telegram channel, said the air force had struck a weapons storage facility of Lebanon’s Hezbollah overnight “in the area of Nabatieh”, which is about 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the nearest point of the Israeli border.

Israeli artillery struck other targets near the border in southern Lebanon, the military said, after air strikes Friday on “Hezbollah military structures” near Hanine and Maroun el-Ras in southern Lebanon.

The killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.

Israel claimed the killing of Shukr, in a strike on south Beirut, but has not commented directly on the killing of Haniyeh while he visited Tehran.

– Shuttle diplomacy –

In an effort to avert a broader conflict, Western and Arab diplomats have been shuttling around the region.

On Thursday, mediators made a new bid to push Israel and Hamas toward a ceasefire in Gaza. Talks took place in the Gulf emirate of Qatar and continued on Friday.

The negotiations are set to resume in Cairo “before the end of next week”, the Egyptian, Qatari and United States mediators said in a joint statement.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said Thursday in Beirut that a ceasefire in Gaza was “necessary” for peace in the region including Lebanon.

“We are all worried about the regional situation,” Sejourne said after meeting parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

The cross-border violence between Lebanon and Israel has killed 579 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 121 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.