JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it struck weapons depots belonging to the armed group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Sunday.
“A short while ago, the IDF (Israeli military) struck Hezbollah weapon storage facilities in southern Lebanon. These weapon depots were used by the terrorist organization to advance and carry out terror attacks against the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
Despite a November ceasefire that ended over a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, the latter has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon and still has troops positioned at five border points inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, is under intense pressure to hand over its weapons, with the Lebanese army having drawn up a plan to disarm it, beginning in the south.
Lebanon itself is facing pressure to act from the United States, as well as from the ongoing Israeli strikes.
But on Saturday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said the group would not allow itself to be disarmed as he addressed supporters while marking one year since the killing by Israel of his predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah was the only major armed group allowed to keep its weapons following Lebanon’s civil war, because it was fighting continued Israeli occupation of the south.
The group’s heartlands are in mainly Shiite southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as south Beirut.
In October 2023, it began launching rockets at Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza. Months of exchanges escalated into all-out war in September 2024, before a ceasefire was agreed two months later.
Israel army says struck Hezbollah weapons depots in south Lebanon
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Israel army says struck Hezbollah weapons depots in south Lebanon
- Despite a November ceasefire that ended over a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, the latter has kept up regular strikes on Lebanon
Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon kills 13 people, Lebanese ministry says
- Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed 13 people and wounded several others, state media and government officials said. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.
The drone strike hit a car in the parking lot of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the state-run National News Agency said. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 13 people were killed and several others wounded in the airstrike, without giving further details.
Hamas fighters in the area prevented journalists from reaching the scene, as ambulances rushed to evacuate the wounded and the dead.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever the group operates.
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound.
Over the past two years, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed scores of officials from the militant Hezbollah group as well as Palestinian factions such as Hamas.
Saleh Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas and a founder of the group’s military wing, was killed in a drone strike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Jan. 2, 2024. Several other Hamas officials have been killed in strikes since then.
Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. That sparked Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A day after the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah began firing rockets toward Israeli posts along the border. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September 2024.
That war, the most recent of several conflicts involving Hezbollah over the past four decades, killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.
The war ended in late November 2024 with a US-brokered ceasefire. Since then, Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.
