Nine killed as Israel pounds south Lebanon
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BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it had attacked troops in northern Israel on Wednesday, as Israeli strikes killed at least nine people in southern Lebanon, dampening hopes for an end to the cycle of violence.
US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he had brokered a deal that Lebanon said would halt Israeli attacks on Beirut and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli territory, before expanding in scope.
Since then, Israel has said it has Washington’s backing to strike Beirut’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold — if the group targets northern Israeli communities.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it intercepted a “hostile aircraft” and two projectiles that crossed into Israeli territory from Lebanon.
Attack on Al Hawsh village leaves four Syrians and two Palestinians dead
Hezbollah, for its part, said that “in response to the Israeli enemy army’s violation of the ceasefire”, its fighters targeted soldiers in northern Israel with a rocket barrage.
A truce to halt the fighting in Lebanon was meant to take hold on April 17, but has never been observed, with both sides justifying their ongoing attacks by the other’s alleged violations.
Senior Hezbollah official Mahmud Qomati had said on Tuesday that the group would “not accept a partial ceasefire”.
Despite the ongoing fighting, Israeli and Lebanese diplomats were to hold a second day of direct talks in Washington.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped the negotiations would produce “an action plan”.
Speaking ahead of the talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US broadcaster CNBC that he and Trump shared the goal “to disarm Hezbollah and... to demilitarise Lebanon”.
He said the group “puts all the citizens of Lebanon at gunpoint and uses Lebanon as a platform to launch terror missiles into our cities”.
Paramedics
Among the Israeli strikes on Wednesday was one targeting a car on the main highway out of the capital, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said.
The NNA also reported strikes on more than 20 locations in the south, some after Israel’s military warned residents of several villages to evacuate. The health ministry said an Israeli attack on Al-Hawsh near the city of Tyre killed four Syrians and two Palestinians. But an Israeli military spokesperson said that “we are not aware of any such attack having occurred in the area”.
The Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli strike elsewhere in the south targeted an ambulance, killing two paramedics from the Risala Scouts Association, which is affiliated with Hezbollah’s ally the Amal movement.
The ministry circulated images of a badly damaged ambulance, with medical masks spilling out of the vehicle and scattered on the road.
At least 130 emergency and health workers have been killed since the fighting began.
Lebanon’s army said a soldier was also killed in an Israeli strike, while an officer and a soldier were wounded in a separate attack on a military vehicle. The force denounced what it called Israel’s “deliberate targeting of army personnel, vehicles and positions”.
Petition
On Tuesday, Israel’s military alleged that Hezbollah members were operating in Tyre’s Christian quarter and said it would warn people to leave should the group remain there.
A correspondent said the situation in Tyre was relatively calm on Wednesday morning, adding that some people who had been sleeping in cars or tents at the edge of the Christian quarter left for other parts of the city.
A petition calling for Tyre to be declared an “open city” free of any armed presence and urging Lebanon’s military to deploy there has garnered more than 180 signatures, including local lawyers and intellectuals.
Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2026
