(Beirut) The official Lebanese news agency (ANI) announced the death on Tuesday of five people including three children in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon.
“Three Syrian children” were killed “during an enemy raid on farmland in the village of Umm Tout,” the agency said.
Another “enemy strike” carried out by a drone targeted a motorcycle traveling on the Kfar Tebnit road, killing the two Syrians on board, according to the same source.
A Lebanese security source said the two dead were “civilians” who were working in the area and had gone swimming.
“Witnesses reported that the motorcycle was carrying two people and that when several people tried to approach the motorcycle […] “She was hit a second time,” the agency said.
After this latest attack, the pro-Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah announced that it had fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on northern Israel in response to “the aggressions of the Israeli enemy against the villages of the south […] in particular the horrific massacre in the village of Oum Tout which killed three children” and “the death of two civilians”, in two separate statements.
” Horrible ”
In Israel, the army said in a statement that “approximately 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory, some of which were intercepted. No injuries were reported.”
It reported an airstrike that “targeted in the Blat region (southern Lebanon) a projectile launching site towards the Kiryat Shmona region”, as well as “a Hezbollah terrorist cell” in the Yarine region, near Umm Tout.
The Israeli military later said it detected 10 more projectiles Tuesday night, while the air force launched strikes on parts of southern Lebanon where it said Hezbollah sites were located.
Sirens warning of gunfire sounded overnight Tuesday into Wednesday in northern Israel, according to the army, but no casualties were reported.
UNICEF called “the killing of three more children in an airstrike (Tuesday) as they played outside their home in southern Lebanon” “horrific,” in a message posted on the social network X.
“Children must be protected by international humanitarian law,” the UN children’s agency said.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered on October 7 by an unprecedented attack by Hamas against Israel, Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian Islamist movement, has been exchanging daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army.
The violence has left 511 dead in Lebanon, mostly fighters but including at least 104 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, 17 soldiers and 13 civilians were killed, according to the authorities.