BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities said Israeli strikes killed 12 people on Tuesday in the Bekaa Valley in the country’s east, where the Israeli military claimed attacks on militant group Hezbollah.
Israel’s military said it struck targets belonging to Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force, in its latest attack on Lebanon despite a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed group.
A military statement said Israeli fighter jets launched “numerous strikes” on “Hezbollah terror targets in the area of Bekaa.”
The targets included training facilities used to “plan and carry out terrorist attacks against (Israeli) troops and the State of Israel,” it added.
The Lebanese health ministry said that “Israeli airstrikes on the Bekaa and Baalbek-Hermel governorates today resulted in the deaths of 12 people and the wounding of 12 others.”
All the deaths were in a strike on the Wadi Fara area in Baalbek district, according to the ministry, reporting seven Syrians and five Lebanese killed.
The state-run National News Agency earlier said that the strike “targeted a camp for displaced Syrians.”
Hezbollah condemned the strikes, calling them “a major escalation in the context of the ongoing aggression against Lebanon and its people.”
It called on Lebanese authorities to “take serious, immediate and decisive action” to uphold the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
Israel has repeatedly bombed Lebanon despite the November ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, including two months of all-out war that left the group severely weakened.
The military statement said that since Israel had “eliminated” Radwan force commanders in September, “the unit has been operating to reestablish its capabilities.”
Storing weapons and other “activities” at the sites targeted on Tuesday were “a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon and constitute a future threat to the State of Israel,” it added.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the latest strikes were “a clear message” to Hezbollah and the Lebanese government “which is responsible for upholding the agreement.”
“We will strike every terrorist and thwart any threat to the residents of the north and to the State of Israel,” he said in a statement of the area bordering Lebanon.
Katz also vowed to “respond with maximum force against any attempt at rebuilding” Hezbollah’s capabilities.
Under the November 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 places it deems strategic.
