BEIRUT: Strikes launched by the Zionist entity on southern Lebanon killed at least 12 people on Wednesday, a Lebanese medical source said. The Zionist entity carried out strikes across the south including the coastal city of Sidon. Earlier, the Zionist entity’s forces seized a municipal councillor and a worker from the border town of Kfarshuba, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, while the said it “apprehended” two people who approached its soldiers.
A ceasefire in Lebanon meant to have gone into force in April was never observed. The two sides continued to trade fire despite a new conditional truce announced after Lebanese-Zionist entity talks in Washington. “The number of martyrs from the (Zionist entity’s) airstrikes in the town of Tayr Dibba is eight, and in Deir Qanun Al-Nahr it is four,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The NNA had reported at least four Zionist strikes on Tayr Dibba and two on Deir Qanun Al-Nahr.
It also reported a drone strike by the Zionist entity on a vehicle in Sidon, a city relatively spared from major Zionist attacks and which hosts a large number of displaced people. An AFP correspondent heard an explosion in the area before seeing a car burning as rescuers and firefighters headed to the scene. The correspondent saw rescuers pull two people from the targeted vehicle.
The Zionist entity’s attacks since March have killed nearly 3,700 people and displaced more than one million others. Neither side has respected a ceasefire first announced in mid-April. Iran insists that Lebanon must be part of any deal to end the wider Middle East war, whose prospects were questioned after Tehran launched attacks on US bases in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait in response to American strikes on its territory.
Two men seized
The NNA said on Wednesday morning that “a (Zionist) patrol took away Kfarshuba municipal council member Mohammad Hassan Al-Hajj and worker Ahmad Salah Diab, taking them to an unknown location.” “The two men were working to pump water to the town of Kfarshuba when the (Zionist) patrol stopped them and took them away,” it added.
The Zionist entity’s military said in a statement to AFP in Jerusalem that it “identified two suspected individuals who approached the area in which (Zionist) soldiers are operating in southern Lebanon”. “The soldiers apprehended the suspected individuals, who were transferred to (the Zionist entity) for further questioning.” Sunni-majority Kfarshuba is among a few southern villages, most of them Christian, whose residents chose to stay throughout the Zionist entity’s invasion and bombardment.
On Tuesday, the association of Christian border villages in southern Lebanon issued a statement urging the Lebanese government to “immediately open safe humanitarian and medical corridors to ensure the access of citizens, aid, and medical and relief teams to the affected and isolated villages.” They pointed to “a dangerous decline in health services due to the disruption or closure of a number of health centres and clinics,” with most roads leading to their villages now “cut off or extremely dangerous.”
The incident comes a day after strikes killed at least 11 people in and around the southern city of Tyre, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The NNA also reported overnight strikes on Nabatieh, one of the south’s largest cities that is now largely deserted. The city is close to areas the Zionist entity military recently occupied, including the medieval-era Beaufort castle which overlooks the district. — AFP
