Israeli Strikes Kill 11 in Southern Lebanon
Israeli air strikes on southern Lebanon killed 11 people, including children, according to the Lebanese health ministry — the deadliest attacks since a ceasefire in June. Seven died in one strike on a family home in the village of Ansar. The Israeli military said it had targeted a Hezbollah commander’s compound in retaliation for an attack that wounded three of its soldiers, and that the civilians killed were the commander’s family. Hezbollah vowed a response.
The strikes shatter the relative calm that had held, however uneasily, since the June truce, and the killing of an entire family in a home will inflame anger in Lebanon and pressure Hezbollah to retaliate. The competing accounts — a health ministry counting civilian dead against an army insisting it hit a legitimate military target — are the familiar and bitter grammar of this conflict, in which each side blames the other for the toll among non-combatants. Israel says Hezbollah deliberately housed the commander among his family; Lebanese officials call the deaths a massacre. With the wider region already inflamed by the crisis in the Gulf, a fresh spiral on Israel’s northern border carries dangerous potential. Watch whether Hezbollah answers and whether the ceasefire survives.