Key takeaways:
- Lebanon’s National News Agency said nine people died when a strike destroyed a three-storey residential building in Kfar Rumman and two paramedics were killed in a second strike on a car.
- Al Jazeera reported at least 10 people were killed in Kfar Reman, including a two-month-old infant, with at least two others missing.
- Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called the attacks a “dangerous escalation” that jeopardised the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreed in June.
Israeli air strikes on a village in southern Lebanon killed at least 11 people, including children and two paramedics, Lebanese state media said, in the latest violence to test a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said nine people were killed shortly after midnight when a strike destroyed a three-storey residential building in Kfar Rumman, a village in the Nabatieh district. Two paramedics were killed in a second strike on a car, the agency reported.
Al Jazeera reported that at least 10 people were killed in the early Monday attack on Kfar Reman, including a two-month-old infant, and that at least two others were missing. Reporting from the village, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said “uncertainty and fear” were the prevailing feelings in southern Lebanon after a wave of attacks.
“People just do not know what is next. There’s been a wave of Israeli attacks over the past 48 hours. Civilians are being killed. Residential homes are being destroyed,” Khodr said, adding that recovery efforts by civil defence workers had continued through the night.
The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the deaths in Kfar Rumman, the BBC reported.
The strikes followed Israeli air raids on Sunday that killed seven people in southern Lebanon, according to the BBC. Al Jazeera reported that at least seven people were killed and 20 others wounded in air raids on the nearby town of Arab Salim.
The Israeli military said those earlier strikes were retaliation for drone attacks by the armed group Hezbollah on its troops in occupied areas of Lebanon, according to the BBC.
Al Jazeera also reported that the Israeli military struck a residential area in Deir al-Zahrani in southern Lebanon overnight after issuing a forced evacuation order. The army said it targeted a building near a Hezbollah facility that it claimed had been used to launch an explosive drone.
The attacks have continued despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreed in June that was intended to end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun warned that the strikes were a “dangerous escalation” that jeopardised the agreement.
The latest reported deaths add to mounting concern in southern Lebanon, where rescue workers were still searching through debris after the Kfar Rumman strike and residents faced renewed uncertainty over whether the ceasefire would hold.
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