16 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Lebanon Despite Truce

(MENAFN) At least 16 people, among them two children, were killed and several others wounded in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Saturday, even as a truce remains nominally in effect, a state news agency and the Health Ministry confirmed.

The deadliest single incident occurred in the southern town of Saksakiyeh, where an Israeli strike claimed seven lives — including one child — and left 15 others wounded, three of them children. In a separate attack in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, a man and his young daughter were killed when three successive airstrikes targeted them directly.

Three additional fatalities were recorded when an Israeli strike hit a vehicle traveling along the road connecting Abbasiyah and Burj Rahal in the Tyre district. A parallel vehicle strike on the Moultaqa al-Nahrain road in the Chouf district of central Lebanon claimed three more lives. An Israeli drone also hit the Al-Masarib neighborhood in Meifdoun, with initial reports pointing to at least one fatality.

Beyond the airstrikes, Israel launched artillery shelling and carried out demolitions of residential homes across several towns, as clashes simultaneously erupted between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Al-Bayada. Artillery fire further struck Braachit, Safad al-Battikh, and Touline, extending into Ghazieh and Froun. Israeli forces additionally discharged illumination flares over villages across the western and central sectors of southern Lebanon.

In Bint Jbeil, Israeli forces demolished homes in the Al-Jabana neighborhood and fired artillery shells on the outskirts of Ghazieh before dawn.

Hezbollah, for its part, claimed it targeted two separate clusters of Israeli soldiers and military vehicles in Rshaf in southern Lebanon, and said it downed an Israeli drone above Al-Abbasiyah using a surface-to-air missile.

The violence persists despite a ceasefire that took effect April 17 and was subsequently extended through mid-May. Israeli strikes and exchanges of fire with Hezbollah have continued on a daily basis since. Israel's military campaign in Lebanon, which intensified from March 2 following the outbreak of the Iran war, has now killed more than 2,700 people and displaced over one million others. Israel also continues to maintain what it designates a "buffer zone" on Lebanese soil. Meanwhile, the US is set to host fresh peace negotiations between the two sides on May 14–15 in Washington.

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