Israel strikes southern Lebanon, killing 10 despite ‘ceasefire’

Israel carried out multiple airstrikes across southern Lebanon, killing at least 10 people and further violating a ceasefire announced two weeks ago.

According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) on May 2, at least three people died in an Israeli attack on the town of Shoukine in Nabatieh district. Earlier, an airstrike targeting a car in the village of Kfar Dajjal killed two others. In Lwaizeh village, a house was hit by a bomb, resulting in three deaths. Another strike on the village of Shoukin claimed two more lives.

Israeli forces also carried out an airstrike near the al-Saada Bakery, close to the al-Quds roundabout in Nabatieh city, and fighter jets bombed the town of Siddiqine in Tyre district.

Israel said these attacks targeted the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, but a large proportion of the dead are civilians. In the past two days alone, at least 44 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, according to NNA. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that as of May 1, the total death toll since war reignited on March 2 had reached at least 2,618 people. More than one million people in Lebanon have also been displaced since the war began.

Hezbollah has vowed to continue attacks on Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory. The group said it targeted multiple concentrations of Israeli soldiers and vehicles across frontline towns in southern Lebanon, including shelling troops near the Moussa Abbas compound in Bint Jbeil and the village of Hula, as well as attacking soldiers in Biyyada using a swarm of kamikaze drones.

In recent days, Hezbollah has used small fiber-optic drones to strike Israeli tanks, killing three Israeli soldiers. The group also claimed to have hit a military Humvee in Taybeh and a Merkava tank in Rishaf.

The latest war between Israel and Hezbollah started on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched a war against the group’s main ally, Iran. Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes and launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon, seizing dozens of towns and villages along the border.

A 10-day ceasefire announced in Washington took effect on April 17 and was later extended by three weeks. However, Al Jazeera correspondent Rory Challands, reporting from Beirut, said the ceasefire existed only in name. “It is essentially a diplomatic structure. On the ground, certainly in the south, the war continues, and in fact, it is expanding,” he said.

Echoing that view, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, said on May 1 that there was no real ceasefire, only a “lower level of hostilities.” “Israel has the responsibility to stop bombarding Lebanon,” Fu Cong said, as China assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for May.

Al Jazeera correspondent Jack Barton from Amman, Jordan reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under strong pressure from multiple sides to abandon the ceasefire. “Most of the Israeli public opposes the ceasefire. The opposition also opposes it. And throughout the past week, the military has said it is ready to re-engage, to expand the conflict if given the green light,” he said. “On May 1, senior officers told multiple Israeli media outlets that they were frustrated, believing the ceasefire was harming Israeli soldiers, who are suffering daily casualties from the first-person-view fiber-optic drones that Hezbollah is increasingly using.”