JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said Friday it had killed a Hezbollah weapons smuggler in a strike on eastern Lebanon a day earlier, the latest attack since a November ceasefire halted the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Lebanon’s health ministry on Thursday reported one death and one injury in a strike on a vehicle in Hermel, the area the Israeli military said it had targeted.
In a statement, the military said the Israeli air force “conducted an intelligence-based strike in the area of Hermel and eliminated the terrorist Mohammed Mahdi Ali Shaheen... who had been coordinating terrorist transactions for the purchase of weapons.”
It added that the slain militant had “recently been involved in transporting weapons from Syria to Lebanon.”
His actions, according to the military statement, “posed a threat to the State of Israel and constituted a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon” that ended the war with Hezbollah.
A Lebanese lawmaker for Hezbollah, Ihab Hamadeh, condemned the strike on the group’s Telegram channel, saying it had targeted “innocent civilians.”
The November 27 truce agreement ended more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of all-out war during which Israel sent in ground troops.
Israel continues to carry out regular strikes on Lebanese territory and the two sides regularly accuse each other of violating the truce, which nevertheless has largely held.
Israeli forces were to pull out from Lebanon on February 18 under the agreement, but kept troops at five locations that authorities deemed “strategic” in Lebanon’s south, near the border.
On Thursday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israeli forces would remain indefinitely in what he called a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon.
The conflict significantly weakened Hezbollah and decimated its leadership.
The hostilities were initiated by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas after the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza.