Israel continues to escalate the strikes across Lebanon since they withdrew from the populated parts of southern Lebanon last week. The focus is increasingly on the east, along the border between Lebanon and Syria.
Tuesday evening, an Israeli drone strike against the village of Yanta killed two people and wounded three. Less than 24 hours later, another strike was launched further north near the village of Qasr. That drone strike hit a vehicle and killed a person, whom Israel is claiming was a Hezbollah member.
Israel is claiming that the Yanta strike targeted a place holding “strategic weapons” belonging to Hezbollah, which is effectively the same claim they made the last time they attacked that same neighborhood in Yanta. There is as yet no actual evidence any such weapons were present.
The strike near Qasr was along the Hermel-al-Qasr Road, which goes southwest from al-Qasr to the larger city of Hermel. Israel is claiming the slain was “a significant Hezbollah terrorist in the 4400 Unit.”
The 4400 Unit is accused of transporting weapons from Iran to Lebanon, historically by way of Syria. When Israeli strikes hit eastern Lebanon along the Syrian border, the 4400 Unit is almost always involved in the narrative of why they attacked.
The idea of Hezbollah using Syria as a route to transfer weapons makes increasingly less sense since the ouster of the Assad government, as the new Syrian Islamist government is extremely hostile to Hezbollah, and shelled Qasr a few weeks ago in the course of a brief ground incursion by the Syrian Army and auxiliaries targeting Lebanese Shi’ites.
Though Israel has attacked eastern Lebanon intermittently, its typical focus has been on the south, which it was occupying militarily up until February 18. Israeli troops remain in Lebanon but not in populated areas, where civilians are trickling home to try to rebuild their lives. The destruction in those towns and villages is vast, and Israeli occupiers have left graffiti among the ruins to remind people that they were recently there. Though strikes in border villages in the south will likely continue, it appears the east is the present primary focus.
