The ceasefire announced Friday between Israel and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah no longer holds much weight. New Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon left at least 16 people dead this Saturday. The strikes targeted more than a dozen localities after midnight and this Saturday morning, many in the Nabatiyé sector, where artillery fire also took place, according to the official Lebanese news agency ANI.
Civil Defense teams, mobilized “since the early hours of the morning” in the Nabatiyé district in response to “ongoing attacks targeting the area”, transported “16 dead and 12 injured” to hospitals, specified the organization in a press release. The Lebanese army, for its part, announced the death of one of its soldiers in the south of the country, “on the Kfar Rumman-Nabatiyé road”. She denounced “the continuation of brutal Israeli attacks [qui] aims to hinder any solution to restore stability in Lebanon.”
The Israeli army said this Saturday it was targeting pro-Iranian Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon, in response to attacks against its soldiers deployed in this part of Lebanon. “In the night, the terrorist organization Hezbollah fired more than 50 projectiles against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon,†a military statement said. “Following these attacks, the IDF struck Hezbollah terrorist targets in the south of the country.”
Hezbollah reserves the right to retaliate
A Hezbollah MP, Hassan Fadlallah, affirmed this Saturday that the pro-Iranian movement had “the right” to respond to Israeli attacks. “For us, what matters is that the enemy fully and totally respects this ceasefire, and that he does not attempt to attack our country and our villages, nor to occupy new positions,” he said in a statement, adding that “the resistance has the full right to confront this enemy when he attacks us, because he is the aggressor and the occupier.”
On Friday, an American official told AFP that an immediate truce between Israel and the Shiite organization Hezbollah, supported by Iran, had been concluded by American and Qatari mediators after discussions with Israel and Iran. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, indicated that his country would respect the ceasefire if Hezbollah did the same, while previous truce announcements had had little effect.
A fifth round of negotiations on Tuesday
Before the new announcement, Israeli strikes had left 47 dead and nearly a hundred injured on Thursday night, according to the Lebanese authorities. It was the heaviest toll since the conclusion, on Monday, of the Iranian-American memorandum of understanding which provides for a cessation of hostilities “on all fronts, including in Lebanon”, a point on which Tehran had insisted. The Israeli army reported the death of four of its soldiers, including a high-ranking officer.
Under pressure from the United States, Lebanon began direct talks with Israel in Washington in April, aimed at ending hostilities. A fifth round of negotiations is scheduled to begin Tuesday, according to the State Department. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that Israeli troops would remain in southern Lebanon “as long as necessary.”
Our file on the war in the Middle East
Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into the war in the Middle East in early March by firing rockets at Israel to avenge the death of the Iranian supreme leader, killed during American-Israeli strikes on Tehran.
/2023/06/06/647efdcbc766b_images.jpg "DIRECT. War in the Middle East: US Vice President JD Vance arrived in Switzerland for talks with Iran")
