BEIRUT: Lebanon said an Israeli strike near the border with Syria killed two people on Thursday, as a deadline nears for Lebanon’s army to disarm militant group Hezbollah in the country’s south.
Despite a November 2024 ceasefire that was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, Israel has kept up strikes on Lebanon and has also maintained troops in five southern areas it deems strategic.
“An Israeli enemy strike today on a vehicle in the town of Hawsh Al-Sayyed Ali in the Hermel district killed two people,” the health ministry said, with the state-run National News Agency saying the raid targeted a van.
The NNA also reported that a man wounded in an Israeli strike last week near Beirut had died of his injuries.
It identified him as a member of Lebanon’s General Security agency and said “he happened to be passing at the time of the strike as he returned from service” in Beirut.
The health ministry had said that strike targeted a vehicle on the Shouf district’s Jadra-Siblin road, around 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the capital, killing one person and wounding five others, while an AFP photographer had seen a damaged goods truck.
On Tuesday, Lebanon’s army said a soldier was among those killed in an Israeli strike a day earlier and denied the Israeli military’s accusation that he was a Hezbollah operative.
Under heavy US pressure and fears of expanded Israeli strikes, Lebanon has committed to disarming Hezbollah, starting with the south.
The army plans to complete the group’s disarmament south of the Litani River — about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border with Israel — by year’s end.
Lebanese army chief Rodolphe Haykal told a military meeting on Tuesday “the army is in the process of finishing the first phase of its plan.”
More than 340 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon since the ceasefire, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry reports.