Hezbollah vows an 'appropriate' response

Israeli strikes kill 11 in south Lebanon after Hezbollah wounds 3 IDF soldiers in attack

Acknowledging civilian casualties in strikes, Israel accuses terror group of deliberately housing women and children in Hezbollah ‘military compound,’ says they were family of targeted commander

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 11 people on Saturday, including three children and two women, Lebanese authorities said, with Israel saying the raids came in response to a Hezbollah attack that violated the ceasefire and seriously wounded at least three IDF soldiers.

Israel later acknowledged that there were civilian casualties in the strikes, accusing the terror group of “deliberately putting civilians in that military compound” and identifying the women and children as the family members of a targeted senior Hezbollah commander.

The Israeli strikes drew harsh criticism from Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, who accused Israel of sending a “clear message” ahead of the next round of US-sponsored negotiations between the countries.

Seven people were killed and two wounded when Israeli warplanes struck a home in Ansar, north of Tyre. Another strike in Deir al-Zahrani, north of Nabatieh, killed four people and wounded several others, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news media.

The IDF confirmed launching airstrikes in southern Lebanon overnight, saying it struck Hezbollah infrastructure in response to an attack by the terror group on Israeli troops. A series of strikes were also reported in the Nabatieh area, including heavy attacks on the Ali Taher Ridge, beneath which Hezbollah has a major underground facility.

The IDF later confirmed three troops operating in the area of the ridge were seriously wounded after being hit by an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah around 2:30 a.m.

The drone exploded near soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, seriously wounding an officer and two soldiers, all three of whom were taken to a hospital for treatment.

In response, the IDF said it struck Hezbollah infrastructure in both the Nabatieh area and Ansar, which are some 9 miles apart, killing the senior commander.

“The strikes were carried out following an action by the Hezbollah terror organization against our forces in the Ali Taher Ridge area, which is located within the security zone where IDF troops are operating,” the military said.

Civilian shields

The wounding of three soldiers in the Hezbollah attack was announced earlier by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, in a rare English-language statement published on Shabbat.

“This morning Hezbollah violated the ceasefire in Lebanon by attacking our soldiers in the security zone, which protects Israeli communities just across the border. The Hezbollah attack seriously injured three of our soldiers,” the statement said.

“The IDF responded by striking the Hezbollah terror headquarters which ordered the attack,” the PMO said.

“Only later did the IDF learn that Hezbollah deliberately put civilians in that military compound,” the statement added, acknowledging the civilian casualties.

The military also confirmed that women and children had been killed and said they were family members of the senior Hezbollah commander it targeted.

“The headquarters was used by the Hezbollah terror organization to command its activities in the area,” the military said.

According to the IDF, the strike killed Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, a battalion commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, along with several more Hezbollah operatives involved in advancing attacks on troops.

“At the time of the strike, Hassan’s family was also present with him inside the military headquarters and, according to the claim, was harmed in the strike. It should be emphasized that the family members were not the target of the strike. The strike was specifically directed at Hassan, who was a lawful target under international law. The terrorist used his family as human shields, hiding alongside them inside the military headquarters,” the IDF said in a statement.

A clear message

Aoun condemned what he called the “ongoing Israeli attacks” on southern Lebanon and “repeated violations of the framework agreement” and international law protecting civilians, according to a statement from his office.

He said the strikes, including the attack in Ansar, amounted to a “clear message on the negotiation process,” but did not explicitly threaten to pull out of them.

The comments came ahead of the next round of US-sponsored talks, expected to take place in Rome early next month.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam also condemned the strikes.

“The seven martyrs of the Israeli airstrike on the town of Ansar are not military infrastructure, and the children and women killed were not military targets,” Salam wrote on X.

“Israel must halt this escalation,” Salam said. He added that the security of the Lebanese people and their right to life on their land “are not subject to negotiation or bargaining.”

In response, Israeli officials cautioned Lebanon against using the violence as an excuse to pull out of talks and urged a deeper engagement.

Netanyahu spokesman Doron Spielman told AFP that Israel wanted new and more ambitious US-brokered talks with Lebanon following Saturday’s deadly attacks, which he asserted “should jumpstart the talks and make them much more serious, not do the opposite.”

“And I think it will. It will hopefully move these talks along because the enemy here is clear and the enemy is Hezbollah,” Spielman said. “We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we’re going to remove Hezbollah from the picture.”

Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter — who heads Israel’s negotiating team in the Lebanon talks — warned Beirut against pulling out of negotiations in response to the strikes.

“If the Lebanese government uses this incident as a pretext to delay or discontinue peace talks, it would hand a tactical victory to the enemies of peace. Derailing the talks is precisely what Hezbollah is trying to achieve,” Leiter wrote on X.

Leiter defended the Israeli strikes, asserting that Hezbollah attacked IDF troops first, targeting those positioned in the army’s southern Lebanon buffer zone.

“In response, the IDF acted decisively against the Hezbollah commander who ordered the attack — a terrorist who used his own family as human shields inside a Hezbollah military headquarters,” Leiter said.

Israel and Lebanon announced a US-mediated framework agreement on June 26, six days after a precarious truce between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect.

The framework set out a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament and envisioned steps toward an eventual peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which technically remain in a state of war.

Hezbollah meanwhile, said the Israeli strikes would be met with an “appropriate” response, urging authorities to halt “humiliating” negotiations with Israel.

Israel “must clearly understand that its attacks, violations and attempts to impose a fait accompli cannot continue, and will be met with an appropriate response,” the Iran-backed terror group said in a statement, adding that Lebanese authorities “must not insist on continuing along the humiliating path of direct negotiations and providing the enemy with free concessions.”

Hezbollah was not a party to the agreement and has rejected calls for it to disarm. Its leader, Naim Qassem, said Friday that the framework was effectively an Israeli dictate that Lebanese authorities had accepted.

The two countries have so far held seven rounds of talks, most recently in Rome earlier this month.

Despite the truce, Israel has carried out several strikes in Lebanon, saying it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and responding to threats against Israeli troops and civilians.

Earlier this month, two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion in southern Lebanon, the first Israeli fatalities there since the June truce. Hezbollah did not comment on the blast.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war ignited on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran. The two sides had previously fought when Hezbollah opened fire on northern Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas’s onslaught attack on Southern Israel.

At least 4,300 people have been killed in Lebanon since the latest round of hostilities began, according to Reuters, in figures that do not differentiate between civilians and Hezbollah combatants. Around 40 Israeli soldiers and three civilians, including a military contractor, have been killed on the Israeli side.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report