Israel has been fighting Hezbollah since early March, sending troops into south Lebanon to battle the Iran-backed militant group, with the violence ongoing despite a shaky ongoing ceasefire.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on Tuesday killed eight people, including three rescue workers, in the country’s south.
The strikes came as violence continues in Lebanon despite an ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, as both sides trade blame over violations of the truce.
Lebanon’s health ministry said “the Israeli enemy’s air raid on the town of Majdal Zoun… has in a preliminary toll killed five martyrs”.
It said that included “three paramedics from the Lebanese civil defence who were trapped under the rubble after a strike that targeted them while they were carrying out a rescue mission”.
The ministry later added that another two people were killed and 13 injured in an Israeli strike in the town of Jebchit in southern Lebanon, while one person was killed and 15 were hurt, including five children and five women, in a separate Israeli strike on Jwaya.
Lebanon’s army reported two of its troops were wounded “as a result of a hostile Israeli targeting of an army patrol”.
The statement was the first time the Lebanese army had said its troops had been targeted since the truce began.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said “an employee working for an engineering company carrying out projects on behalf of the Ministry of Defence was killed” in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Lebanon says Israel ‘violating international law’
Tuesday’s strikes came after Israel issued a fresh evacuation order aimed at residents in more than a dozen villages and towns, urging them to immediately head northwards.
The evacuation warning urged residents to leave “immediately” and move “towards the Sidon District,” the army’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X.
Shortly afterwards, state media said Israel carried out airstrikes across the south, hitting targets that all appeared to be outside or on the border of the “yellow line”, an Israeli military-occupied “buffer zone” that stretches 10 kilometres.
Despite the order, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel had “no territorial ambitions in Lebanon” and would leave south Lebanon when “Hezbollah and other terror organisations… are dismantled”.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun denounced the attack on Majdal Zoun, saying “Israel continues to violate international laws and conventions that protect civilians”.
Saar did not comment on the fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah, which both sides have violated multiple times since US President Donald Trump announced it last week, and whether Israel might expand its military operations beyond southern Lebanon. He did note Israel’s first direct negotiations with Lebanon in decades.
Human rights group Amnesty International urged Israel on Tuesday to stop destroying civilian property in southern Lebanon, after a video circulated online showing Israeli military excavators destroying solar panels for the Lebanese border village of Debel and its water station.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it was investigating the incident after the footage emerged. Debel is the same village where a soldier was filmed earlier this month smashing a statue of Jesus, prompting international condemnation.
“Amnesty International has previously documented extensive destruction by the Israeli military along Lebanon’s border before and after the November 2024 ceasefire,” the group said, adding it had called for reparations and war crimes investigations. “So far, neither has appeared.”
Israel destroys alleged Hezbollah tunnel network
Israel’s military also announced that troops in Qantara found “two Hezbollah terror tunnels, constructed over approximately a decade” that stretched two kilometres, using “over 450 tonnes of explosives” to demolish them.
Lebanese state media said an Israeli detonation had left a “large crater” in Qantara, after earlier reporting a “major demolition operation” in the town.
An Israeli military source described it as a “massive underground military installation” comprising an 800-metre tunnel and a second which ran for 1.2 kilometres, that was used as “an assembly area” for Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces.
Running under civilian infrastructure, including a school and a mosque, the tunnels were equipped with sleeping quarters, showers, toilets, kitchenettes and five assembly halls, he said, indicating it was “designed, sponsored and paid for by Iran”.
“Today we blew up a huge Hezbollah terror tunnel,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vowing to continue targeting the militants’ infrastructure.
In a statement, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the army has been instructed to destroy any Hezbollah infrastructure it finds, “just like in Gaza.”
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on 2 March by firing rockets towards Israel to avenge the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Lebanon’s health ministry raised the death toll of the Israel-Hezbollah war to 2,534 on Tuesday, adding that 7,863 have been wounded since the war broke out.
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