Israel Strikes Southern Lebanon Again as Toll Rises
Israel carried out fresh air strikes on southern Lebanon overnight, a day after raids that the Lebanese health ministry said killed 11 people, including children — the deadliest since a June ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had killed a second senior Hezbollah commander, and families were reported fleeing north. Hezbollah has vowed to respond but has not yet retaliated.
The renewed strikes, and the naming of a second commander among the dead, suggest Israel is pressing a deliberate campaign against Hezbollah’s leadership rather than a one-off, testing a truce that has frayed badly. The competing accounts of Friday’s deadly raid — a health ministry counting civilians, including a family killed in their home, against an army insisting it hit a legitimate target — frame the bitter argument over blame. Hezbollah’s restraint so far may reflect calculation as much as weakness, weighing the cost of a wider war it can ill afford; but each strike raises the pressure to answer. Civilians fleeing the border villages are the first casualties of that dilemma. With the Gulf also aflame, a new front here would be dangerous. Watch whether Hezbollah retaliates and whether the ceasefire holds.