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Returning residents and civil defence members gather to watch an excavator clear rubble from destroyed structures in the village of Touline, Marjayoun district, southern Lebanon.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images
- Israeli forces hit Lebanon, killing at least five people.
- Israeli warplanes targeted the Nabatieh al-Fawqa area and the eastern outskirts of neighbouring town Kfar Tebnit.
- US President Donald Trump issued a rare public rebuke of Israel’s military tactics in Lebanon.
Israeli forces on Wednesday carried out airstrikes on several areas in southern Lebanon, state media reported, despite a peace deal in the Middle East war that includes Lebanon.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said Israeli warplanes launched raids targeting the Nabatieh al-Fawqa area and the eastern outskirts of neighbouring town Kfar Tebnit.
The Israelis also launched a drone strike on the town of Ansariyeh in the Zahrani area, NNA reported.
While violence has declined in Lebanon since a US-Iran agreement to end the Middle East war was announced on Monday, Israeli strikes on the south have still killed at least five people since the deal, according to NNA.
The reduction in violence has allowed some southern Lebanon residents to return and inspect their towns and villages, but the Lebanese army has urged locals to delay their return, citing “the risk of Israeli violations and attacks”.
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The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in early March by firing rockets at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in US-Israeli strikes.
Israel responded with a massive campaign of airstrikes and a ground invasion.
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Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that an end to the conflict would be incomplete “without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories it occupied in this war”.
“Any military attack by the Zionist regime on Lebanon from now on and the continued occupation of Lebanese territories from now on will be considered a violation of the memorandum of understanding in our view,” he said.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that his country’s forces would remain in Lebanon “for as long as necessary”.
Hezbollah has, so far, not issued any statements since Tuesday, claiming attacks on Israeli targets in southern Lebanon.
The group’s leader, Naim Qassem, is due to make a televised address on Wednesday.
Ask yourselves: why would Hezbollah need stockpiles like this in South Lebanon?
💥 5 tons of explosives
💥 Dozens of killer drones
💥 Land mines and IEDs
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This is what we're… pic.twitter.com/99CFcLGOKh
He expressed “profound gratitude” on Tuesday for Iran’s efforts “to compel the Israeli entity to an immediate and permanent cessation of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon”.
Lebanon’s health ministry on Tuesday raised the death toll in Israeli attacks since the war broke out to 3 826, as rescuers retrieved more bodies from the rubble.
Reuters reported that US President Donald Trump issued a rare public rebuke of Israel’s military tactics in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah militants, saying it was unnecessary to bomb entire apartment buildings to hunt militants.
Trump, who in recent days had expressed his displeasure over Israeli attacks in Beirut that he said could have endangered his peace deal with Iran, said Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, the Iran-aligned Lebanese militia, for “too long”.
“Too many people have been killed. You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah,” Trump said at the G7 summit in France.
Pro-Iranian Hezbollah supporters wave the party flags in the devastated Beirut southern suburbs.
Marwan Naamani/picture alliance via Getty Images
His complaint comes at a moment of rising tensions with Netanyahu, who has remained a key political ally despite occasional ups and downs between the two leaders over the years.
Recently, tensions have been more prominent.
Israeli officials are quietly expressing frustration about the Iran deal that the Republican president struck, while Trump is growing impatient with Netanyahu over Israeli strikes on Beirut, which triggered Iranian attacks just when he was working to finalise the peace deal.
Trump said he has a “great relationship” with Netanyahu, but in the same breath added that he should be “more responsible” with Lebanon.
He said:
Without us, without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did.
The two leaders have repeatedly clashed over Israel’s refusal to constrain its pursuit of Hezbollah in Lebanon, where a cessation of hostilities is a key Iranian demand.
Trump and other US presidents do not often criticise Israel’s military tactics.
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