An Israeli drone strike killed five people, including three children, in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil yesterday, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Israel has frequently targeted what it calls Hizbollah positions in southern Lebanon since a US-brokered truce between Lebanon and Israel took effect in November, following more than a year of conflict sparked by the war in Gaza.
Lebanon’s state news agency said the strike hit a motorbike and a vehicle, wounding two others.
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said in a statement that a father and his three children were among the dead, with the mother wounded. He said they held US citizenship.
The Israeli military said it killed a Hizbollah member in the strike but that “several uninvolved civilians were killed”.
“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimise harm as much as possible. The incident is under review,” it said in a statement.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, in a post on X, described the attack as a “blatant crime against civilians and a message of intimidation aimed at our people returning to their villages in the south.”
Lebanon is under pressure from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Hizbollah’s domestic rivals to disarm the Iranian-backed group.
Hizbollah has said it would be a serious mis-step even to discuss disarmament while Israel is continuing air strikes on Lebanon and occupying swaths of territory in its south.
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