AT least 11 people, including three children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Saturday, in the deadliest attacks since a truce between Israel and Hezbollah took effect on June 20.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news agency said an airstrike targeting a home on the outskirts of Ansar village killed seven people, including three children, and wounded two others.
AP reported on Sunday that a second strike on the village of Deir al-Zahrani killed four people and wounded 17, according to the reports.
The attacks came despite a “framework agreement” announced by Israel and the Lebanese Government on June 26, outlining a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon in return for the disarmament of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
The agreement envisages steps towards an eventual peace deal between Israel and Lebanon, which remain technically at war nearly eight decades after Israel’s establishment.
Hezbollah has rejected direct negotiations with Israel and was not party to the agreement.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the latest strikes, saying they were intimidating civilians in their homes and undermining efforts to restore stability in southern Lebanon.
“The seven martyrs of the Israeli airstrike on the town of Ansar are not military infrastructure and the children and women killed were not military targets,” Salam said on X.
He said it was the responsibility of the Lebanese state to deal with any military infrastructure within the country.
President Joseph Aoun said the strikes represented “a clear message to the negotiation track and to the American efforts aimed at implementing this agreement”.
Israel, however, said its military action was in response to an attack on its soldiers in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in the Ali Taher and Ansar areas following an attack that seriously wounded three Israeli soldiers.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hezbollah had violated the ceasefire by attacking Israeli troops inside Lebanon and that Israel had subsequently struck the Hezbollah headquarters responsible for ordering the attack.
Israel said it later discovered that civilians had been present at the site.
The Israeli military subsequently said the Ansar strike killed Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, whom it identified as a battalion commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.
The military said Hassan’s family was with him and was also killed or wounded, but stressed that they were not deliberately targeted.
Hezbollah has not confirmed whether it carried out an attack on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
The group instead called on the Lebanese state to find ways to halt what it described as “this aggression”, rejecting US-sponsored direct talks with Israel.
“The American side is a partner of the Israeli enemy in its crimes and massacres,” Hezbollah said.
Earlier this month, two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Lebanon, marking the first Israeli military deaths since the June truce. Hezbollah has not commented on the incident.
Lebanon and Israel have held seven rounds of talks, with the latest taking place in Rome earlier this month.
Hezbollah has refused to disarm, accusing the Lebanese Government of making excessive concessions without securing a guaranteed Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
The latest Israel-Hezbollah conflict erupted on March 2, after Hezbollah fired rockets across the border two days after the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran.
More than 4,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since then, including hundreds of civilians, while about 40 Israeli soldiers and three civilians, including a military contractor, have been killed on the Israeli side. - August 16, 2026
