BEIRUT: Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon killed at least 12 people on Wednesday, a Lebanese medical source said, as Israel carried out strikes across the south including the coastal city of Sidon.
Earlier, Israeli forces seized a municipal councillor and a worker from the border town of Kfarshuba, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, while Israel said it “apprehended” two people who approached its soldiers.
A ceasefire in Lebanon meant to have gone into force in April was never observed, and a new conditional truce announced after Lebanese-Israeli talks in Washington last week was rejected by militant group Hezbollah and both sides have continued to trade fire.
The agreement did not mention a halt to Israeli attacks.
“The number of martyrs from the Israeli 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 Israeli strikes on Tayr Dibba and two on Deir Qanun al-Nahr.
It also reported an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in Sidon, a city relatively spared from major Israeli 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.
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 in support of Iran.
Lebanese authorities say Israeli 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. The NNA said on Wednesday morning that “an Israeli 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 Israeli patrol stopped them and took them away,” it added.
The Israeli military said in a statement to AFP in Jerusalem that it “identified two suspected individuals who approached the area in which (Israeli) soldiers are operating in southern Lebanon”.
“The soldiers apprehended the suspected individuals, who were transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning.”
Sunni-majority Kfarshuba is among a few southern villages, most of them Christian, whose residents chose to stay throughout the Israel-Hezbollah war despite Israeli orders to evacuate.
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”.
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