Two Lebanese soldiers were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on Friday, the Lebanese military said, in an incident that embroiled the country's government army in an escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
The Lebanese army said Israeli airstrikes hit a building near a military checkpoint in Kafra in Bint Jbeil province in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
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The attack on the Lebanese army came hours after Israeli soldiers opened fire on a UN peacekeeping headquarters in southern Lebanon, wounding two peacekeepers for the second time in as many days.
The Lebanese army has largely remained on the sidelines of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to prevent it from spiraling out of control. After Israeli troops launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon, Lebanese troops withdrew about 5 kilometers from their observation post on the border.
But as Israel intensifies its campaign against Hezbollah, carrying out heavy airstrikes in Lebanon and a wave of ground attacks along the border, Lebanese troops are increasingly finding themselves caught in the crossfire. Earlier this month, an Israeli airstrike killed one Lebanese soldier and wounded another.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, is also at the center of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. International forces said the explosion occurred near an observation tower at their headquarters in the southern Lebanese city of Naqora. One of the injured peacekeepers was hospitalized in the nearby city of Tyre, and the other was treated on site.
Unifil did not provide a cause for the explosion. However, the Israeli military said soldiers operating in southern Lebanon detected the threat and responded with fire, ultimately hitting a UNIFIL post and wounding two peacekeepers. The army said initial analysis showed the target was approximately 50 meters from UNIFIL's position.
UN forces said they sent reinforcements to the area after another incident earlier on Friday in which an Israeli army bulldozer struck the perimeter of a separate UNIFIL position in southern Lebanon as Israeli tanks approached.
The force reported that an Israeli tank fired directly into an observation tower at UNIFIL headquarters on Thursday, wounding two Indonesian peacekeepers. It also said that Israeli troops attacked a bunker at the base where peacekeepers were sheltering, damaging vehicles and the communications system.
The incidents have drawn sharp criticism from European countries that contribute troops to the UN forces, including Italy and France. Israel has warned peacekeepers to abandon positions near where it says Hezbollah fighters fired rockets into northern Israel last year in a cross-border attack.
Rescuers searched the rubble of a collapsed building in central Beirut on Friday, hours after two Israeli attacks in the Lebanese capital that killed at least 22 people and injured dozens.
The airstrikes in central Beirut were the deadliest in more than a year of war, hitting two apartment buildings in the area that housed displaced people fleeing Israeli bombing elsewhere in the country.
Al-Manar TV and Hezbollah's Israeli media reported that the aim of the attack was to kill Wafiq Safa, the group's top security official. Al-Manar said: Safa was not in any building at that time. The Israeli military did not comment on the report.
Hezbollah expanded its rocket fire to more populated areas in Israel. Most of Hezbollah's dams, while disrupting the lives of Israelis, have caused no casualties. But early Friday, an anti-tank rocket fired from Lebanon killed a Thai man working on a farm in northern Israel.
In Beirut's Burj Abi Haider neighborhood, civil defense members and city workers dug out piles of concrete and twisted metal from a three-story building that was razed by a Thursday evening strike.
In an adjacent building that was severely damaged, Ahmad al-Khatib stood in his in-laws' apartment where he, his wife Marwa Hamdan and their two-year-old daughter Ayla were injured. He had just picked up his wife from work and was offering evening Muslim prayers at home when the explosion occurred.
The world suddenly turned upside down and darkness reigned, the 42-year-old said, tears streaming down his cheeks. He pulled his daughter out from under the rubble of the collapsed bedroom wall. Al-Khatib, who works for the post office. He said the force of the explosion threw his wife against a wall and a piece of metal hit her in the head.
I looked at his face and shouted, “Say something!” – she said, but he only responded with sounds of pain. His wife is in intensive care at a hospital in Beirut. Her daughter suffered minor injuries.
Mohammad Tarhani said he and his brother moved to a nearby neighborhood after fleeing southern Lebanon last week to avoid airstrikes. Her children were on the porch and she was in the living room when the strike occurred.
He said we rushed to find the children. Where to go now?
Civil defense official Walid Hashash said he did not expect more bodies under the rubble because no one was missing. He added that the final death toll would be announced after the operation was completed.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians on October 8, 2023, prompting Israeli airstrikes in retaliation. Israel says its intensified operation since late September is aimed at pushing Hezbollah away from the border to allow tens of thousands of citizens evacuated from the area to return home.
More than 2,100 Lebanese were killed in Israeli attacks last year, including Hezbollah fighters, civilians and medical workers, more than two-thirds of them in the last few weeks. Hezbollah attacks have killed 29 civilians and 39 Israeli soldiers in northern Israel and southern Lebanon since October 2023, since Israel launched its ground offensive on September 30. miles) along the border.
The war threatens to escalate further, with Israel set to deal a crippling blow to its long-time rival Hezbollah. Netanyahu warned the Lebanese this week that if they do not take action against Hezbollah, they will suffer the same destruction that Israel's campaign against Hamas has caused in Gaza.
Israel also vowed to take revenge on Iran, a supporter of the Lebanese group, after it fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week. The Iranian shelling was in retaliation for an earlier Israeli attack that killed a Hamas leader in Tehran and senior members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Friday reiterated U.S. support for stepping up Israel's campaign against Hezbollah. He said Israel has a clear and very legitimate interest in trying to secure the return of thousands of citizens evacuated from their homes near the border since last October because of the Hezbollah fire.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been modified by Business Standards staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)