Latest news with #Shebaa
France 24
05-07-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Israel conducts deadly strikes on southern Lebanon despite fragile ceasefire
Lebanon said one person was killed and six wounded on Saturday in a series of Israeli strikes in the south despite a ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hezbollah. An "Israeli enemy drone strike on a vehicle" in the town of Bint Jbeil "killed one person and wounded two", Lebanon's health ministry said in a statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA). The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces "struck and eliminated" an operative from Hezbollah's elite Radwan force in the area. The health ministry also reported one person wounded in a drone strike on another car in the same town, and two others seriously wounded in a similar raid on a vehicle in nearby Shaqra. Israel 'systematically' violating Lebanon ceasefire deal 14:56 Also on Saturday, the ministry reported that a separate Israeli drone strike wounded one person in Shebaa, elsewhere in the south, with NNA reporting that a house was targeted. Israel has kept up its bombardment of Lebanon since a November 27 ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah including two months of all-out war that left the Iran-backed group severely weakened. On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle at the southern entrance of Beirut killed a man and wounded three other people, Lebanon said, as the Israeli army said it hit a "terrorist" working for Iran. Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region. Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country, but has kept them in five places it deems strategic. Israel has warned that it will keep striking Lebanon until Hezbollah has been disarmed.
Al Jazeera
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Israeli drone attacks in southern Lebanon kill one, injure several people
Israel has carried out three drone attacks on towns in southern Lebanon, resulting in a death and several injured, in the latest wave of near-daily Israeli violations of the November ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah. An 'Israeli enemy drone attack on a vehicle' in the Saf al-Hawa area in the city of Bint Jbeil 'killed one person and wounded two others', Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health said in a statement on Saturday carried by the official National News Agency (NNA), noting the toll was expected to rise. Earlier Saturday, the ministry also reported that a separate Israeli drone attack wounded one person in Shebaa, with the NNA saying that raid hit a house. Shebaa is located across two steep, rocky mountainsides that straddle Lebanon's borders with Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel also launched a drone attack on the town of Chaqra, in the Bint Jbeil District. Lebanon's Health Ministry said two people were wounded in the attack. بالفيديو: جريحان جراء الغارة على سيارة في بلدة شقرا — Cedar News (@cedar_news) July 5, 2025 Translation: Video: Two injured due to the air raid on a car in the town of Chaqra. Israel has kept up its bombardment of Lebanon on a near daily basis, despite a November 27 US-brokered ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including an intensive period of the war that left the Iran-aligned group severely weakened. Israel says its air raids are targeting officials and facilities of Hezbollah and other groups. Hezbollah has claimed only one strike fired across the border since the ceasefire. Most of the Israeli strikes have been in southern Lebanon, but Israel has also struck Beirut's southern suburbs several times since the ceasefire, destroying residential buildings and prompting panic and chaos among residents fleeing the area. On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle at the southern entrance of Beirut, close to the country's only commercial airport, killed one man and wounded three other people, Lebanon said, as the Israeli army claimed it hit a 'terrorist' working for Iran. Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani River, about 30km (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region. Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country but has kept them in five locations in southern Lebanon that it deems strategic. Israel has warned that it will keep attacking Lebanon until Hezbollah has been disarmed. Nearly 250 people have been killed and 609 wounded in Israeli attacks in Lebanon between November 28 – the day after the ceasefire took effect – and the end of June, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. A United States envoy is expected in Beirut early next week to discuss with Lebanon's leadership efforts to pressure Hezbollah to relinquish its arms to the state. Hezbollah has rejected a US proposal to disarm by November, calling it 'suicidal' amid daily Israeli attacks. Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun has repeatedly called on the US and France to rein in Israel's attacks, noting that disarming Hezbollah is a 'sensitive, delicate issue'.
Arab News
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Lebanon says 1 killed in Israeli strike on south
BEIRUT: Lebanon said one person was killed on Saturday in an Israeli strike in the country's south, the latest deadly raid despite a ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hezbollah. An 'Israeli enemy drone strike on a vehicle' in Bint Jbeil 'killed one person and wounded two others,' Lebanon's health ministry said in a statement carried by the official National News Agency (NNA), noting the toll was provisional. Earlier Saturday, the ministry reported that a separate Israeli drone strike wounded one person in Shebaa, elsewhere in the south, with the NNA saying that raid targeted a house. Israel has kept up its bombardment of Lebanon since a November 27 ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah including two months of all-out war that left the Iran-backed group severely weakened. On Thursday, an Israeli strike on a vehicle at the southern entrance of Beirut killed one man and wounded three other people, Lebanon said, as the Israeli army said it hit a 'terrorist' working for Iran. Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region. Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country, but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic. Israel has warned that it would keep striking Lebanon until Hezbollah has been disarmed.
The National
27-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
South Lebanese watched war next door in Israel while still facing attacks from their neighbour
For 20-odd days last autumn, Lt Col Alok Kumar Singh and his 70 fellow UN peacekeepers were trapped at their Unifil base in Shebaa village as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raged around them. From their vantage point 1,385 metres above sea level they were able to observe the culmination of a nearly year-long war between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group that reduced many towns and villages across southern Lebanon to rubble. 'We saw the movement of various Israeli vehicles in the vicinity of this post. And then there was a tank which was firing from that [hilltop],' Lt Col Singh says, pointing into the distance and then to a map showing where artillery shells had landed in the area. 'It was difficult, definitely it was difficult. But we were following the procedures, the alert levels,' he says. The peacekeepers spent many hours sheltering in the base's fortified bunkers, unable to conduct their usual patrols or receive fresh supplies. More than six months later, the Unifil soldiers are back on their patrols amid the comparative calm that has followed a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in November. Lt Col Singh says the patrols are conducted in co-ordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which has increased its deployment in southern Lebanon to ensure the withdrawal of Hezbollah from the region, collect its weaponry and dismantle its military sites; all conditions of the US-brokered truce. However Israel has continued to conduct air strikes inside Lebanon on a near daily basis. The Israeli army says the attacks target Hezbollah figures, weapons and military sites, but they have also killed civilians and destroyed infrastructure. On Friday, at least one civilian was killed and 20 injured in Israeli strikes near the city of Nabatieh. Despite these attacks, residents of the south who fled the war have returned to their wrecked homes and villages. Lt Col Singh points to an Israeli base on a ridge opposite the Unifil base, from where Israeli soldiers opened fire a week ago. In the valley below sits Shebaa Farms, an Israeli-occupied sliver of land claimed by both Syria and Lebanon that has long been the scene of sporadic clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli troops. His finger moves left to Mount Hermon in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an area seized from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war. Another UN peacekeeping force is deployed there to monitor a buffer zone between Israeli-occupied territory and Syria, established under a ceasefire agreement following a war between the two countries in 1973. Despite this, Israeli troops invaded the zone after former Syrian president Bashar Al Assad was toppled in December. Mount Hermon is also visible from Deir Mimas – a small Lebanese village to the south-west that sits about 2km from the UN-demarcated border between Israel and south Lebanon. Israeli troops entered the village in late September as Israel ramped up its response to Hezbollah's cross-border fire with a ground invasion of border areas and intensified bombardment across Lebanon. Footage emerged of Israeli soldiers desecrating a church in the village. The end of September should have been the time of the olive harvest in the picturesque village, perched above a steep valley from where Hezbollah would launch rockets at Israel. Instead, its residents fled. 'Some trees were damaged by the missiles,' said Michel Bechara, an olive farmer from Deir Mimas who decided to remain in Beirut. 'Others don't carry olives because of the bombs that came. 'Some people moved back to the south, but definitely life is not that stable there." Though Israeli troops have left the village, they continue to occupy five points of Lebanese territory along the border, in another violation of the ceasefire. 'We've had enough' Beirut resident Hassan Fakih says Israel's continuing attacks weigh on his mind as he awaits the arrival of his brother with his family for their annual visit to the family home in south Lebanon. His concerns rose after Israel launched devastating air strikes on Iran on June 13 and Iran responded with drone and missile attacks. The 12-day war sparked fears of a wider regional conflict before it ended this week after US President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire. The war provided Lebanese with the rare sight of Tel Aviv being struck. 'People were running in Tel Aviv. A lot of people's homes are destroyed, it looks like south Lebanon,' said Mr Fakih, who admitted to a sense of satisfaction at seeing the tables turned. 'But I'm happy it was not Hezbollah doing it. We've had enough,' he said. The same sentiment was expressed by Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Qatar's capital on Tuesday. Like aircraft across the region, his flight to Doha was diverted the previous evening as Iran launched missiles at the Al Udeid American airbase in Qatar in retaliation for the US bombing of its nuclear sites at the weekend. "We thank God for having succeeded, over the past two weeks, in preventing Lebanon from being drawn into a new war. We now aspire to open a new page of diplomatic action," Mr Salam told reporters. 'Normality has returned' Hezbollah, severely weakened by Israel's attack's, ultimately did not intervene in support of its patron. The group has vacated its most threatening positions in the south and much of its arsenal is believed to have been destroyed by Israel. On the outskirts of a town to the north of Nabatieh, near a bridge across a small ravine, a mound of dirt visible in the distance indicates where a major Hezbollah tunnel was destroyed earlier this year, according to a local. 'It was big,' he says. 'But not Emad-4,' he adds, referring to a large underground tunnel facility seen in a video Hezbollah released last year. As incoming missiles triggered sirens across northern Israel during the war with Iran, farmers across the border in Lebanon were harvesting fields of wheat that line the road running north of the battered town of Khiam and then east to the Unifil base in Shebaa 'The difference between now and the [Hezbollah] war is that at that time the LAF was not here, the civilians had moved out. Shebaa, the village, was empty," Lt Col Singh says. 'But after the war, the LAF came in, they have occupied all the posts that were there. The civilians have come – they are now into a normal routine and have celebrated Eid and had their festivals. 'Normality, we can call it, has returned.'
Asharq Al-Awsat
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Lebanon Says Two Dead in Israel Strike
An Israeli strike killed a Lebanese father and son Tuesday in a southern village, the Lebanese health ministry and state media said, the latest deaths despite a November ceasefire. A second son was also wounded in the strike in Shebaa, the state-run National News Agency reported. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. "An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike in the village of Shebaa, killing two people and wounding one," a health ministry statement said, AFP reported. Israel had warned on Friday that it would keep up its strikes on Hezbollah targets across Lebanon despite the condemnation expressed by the Lebanese government after a massive strike on south Beirut the previous night on the eve of the Eid al-Adha holiday. Hezbollah said the strikes levelled nine residential blocks. The Israeli military said they targeted underground drone factories. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the strikes as a "a flagrant violation" of the November 27 ceasefire agreement, which was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah that culminated in two months of full-blown war.
