Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike on Saturday in southern Lebanon killed nine people, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
The toll from the strike in the Nabatieh area is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israeli forces began exchanging near-daily fire over their border after war in the Gaza Strip began in October.
International mediators have been trying to reach a Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants, which diplomats say could help to avert a wider war in which Lebanon would be on the front line.
The death toll from the latest strike included “a woman and her two children” and five other people were wounded, two critically, Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement.
Israel’s military, on its Telegram channel, said the air force had struck a weapons storage facility of Lebanon’s Hezbollah overnight “in the area of Nabatieh”, which is about 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the nearest point of the Israeli border.
Israeli artillery struck other targets near the border in southern Lebanon, the military said, after air strikes Friday on “Hezbollah military structures” near Hanine and Maroun el-Ras in southern Lebanon.
The killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.
Israel claimed the killing of Shukr, in a strike on south Beirut, but has not commented directly on the killing of Haniyeh while he visited Tehran.
