BEIRUT: Israeli strikes during the night from Thursday to Friday in southern Lebanon left 18 dead and 33 injured according to Beirut, with Israel deploring the loss of four soldiers.
These are the most massive bombings and the heaviest toll since the announcement on Monday of an Iranian-American protocol, which provides for a cessation of hostilities, including in Lebanon, where Israel and the Islamist movement Hezbollah, ally of Tehran, clash.
“The intensive Israeli air strikes carried out from midnight until this morning prevented the evacuation of the martyrs and the wounded, and left 18 dead and 33 injured, according to a provisional report,” the Lebanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. communicated.
They affected at least 10 localities, near the town of Nabatiyé in southern Lebanon, including that of Harouf, where eight people died, according to the Lebanese National Information Agency (ANI).
Other Israeli strikes targeted the Baalbek region in the east of the country, relatively spared since the start of the conflict on March 2.
Many residents fled the south after these raids, according to the Lebanese National Information Agency (ANI). Crowded cars, with mattresses and personal effects, invaded the roads, leaving the Tire region, noted an AFP correspondent.
“All of Lebanon must burn”
The Israeli army, for its part, claimed to have struck Hezbollah infrastructure in response to the death of these soldiers, whose tank was hit shortly after midnight in the Kfar Tebnit area, near Nabatiyé.
Israeli media military correspondents speak of the impact of “a missile or a drone”.
“Lieutenant Colonel Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon fell in combat” in southern Lebanon with “three other soldiers” whose names will be published later, the army said. She denounces the “repeated violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah”, which “continues to prepare and carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers”.
“All of Lebanon must burn,” responded Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, a figure of the far right and key political ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“That’s enough ping-pong. In the Middle East, we don’t win with measured reactions and restraint,” he added. “You have to be crazy, eradicate. And defeat terrorism.”
“We must make the fire speak (…) Open the gates of hell”, declared on X his colleague and far-right rival Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance, without explicitly mentioning Lebanon but alluding to the deaths of the soldiers.
In a statement released in the early hours, the pro-Iranian group announced that its fighters had targeted Israeli forces near the Ali Taher hills, which overlook the town of Nabatiyé, with “rocket and mortar shell” fire.
He claimed during the night to have destroyed three Israeli tanks during clashes between his fighters and an Israeli army unit in southern Lebanon.
/2026/06/18/6a33a0f17dcc0076748272.jpg "Extended ceasefire, reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, status quo on nuclear power… What the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States contains")
