At least 10 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon, Lebanon’s health ministry has said, while Israeli forces have attacked a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.Those killed in the attack in the Nabatieh region included “a woman and her two children” and five others were injured, two of them seriously, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday, adding that a residential building was attacked.
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The Israeli military claimed on its Telegram channel that the air force struck a weapons depot of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah at night “in the area of Nabatieh”, located about 12 km (seven miles) from the closest point of the Israeli border.
Earlier, the army posted on social media that its fighter jets attacked “military buildings” in the villages of Maroun al-Ras and Aita al-Shaab, 50 km (31 miles) south of the town of Nabatieh.
Lebanon’s national news agency said a brick mill on the outskirts of the northern town of Wadi al-Kafour was attacked, and the dead included the mill’s caretaker, a Syrian national and his entire family.
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Mohammed Shoaib, who runs a slaughterhouse in Wadi al-Kafour, said the area attacked was an “industrial and civilian area” with factories producing brick, metal and aluminium, as well as a dairy farm.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.The attack is one of the deadliest in Lebanon since Hezbollah began almost daily exchanges of gunfire with Israeli forces in support of its ally Hamas and in solidarity with the Palestinian people following Israel’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and subsequent war on Gaza.
Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon carried out at least 8,533 cross-border attacks from October 7 to July 31, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.Israel carried out approximately 82 percent of these attacks, a total of 7,033 incidents, killing at least 601 people in Lebanon.
Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,500 attacks, killing at least 23 Israelis.Tensions have escalated since a deadly rocket attack in July killed at least 12 people – many of them children – on a Druze village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel blamed on Hezbollah. Hezbollah denied responsibility.
Israel then killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a missile attack in a suburb of Beirut.Hezbollah has vowed to avenge the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as has Iran.
The killings and threats of retaliation by Israel have raised fears of a major regional escalation.Since the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, the Iran-allied armed group has increased its military strength, according to analysts.On Friday, Hezbollah released a video showing its fighters carrying large missiles through tunnels at an underground facility in Lebanon.
Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, a security consulting firm, said it was “the clearest video Hezbollah has ever released, showing the size of its tunnels” and weapons stockpiles. He said Hezbollah possibly released the video to “deter” Israel from launching a major operation against it in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has repeatedly said that only a Gaza ceasefire deal would stop its attacks on Israeli forces in northern Israel.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is “prepared both defensively and offensively” and is “determined” to defend itself against both Hezbollah and Iran.But pressure is mounting on Israel to agree a ceasefire deal in Gaza that would avoid a wider war involving Lebanon and Iran.
