Two Killed, Several Wounded as Israel Attacks Southern Lebanon

Israel has continued its attacks on southern Lebanon throughout the weekend, killing a Hamas commander and his family in a drone strike on Sidon overnight Friday into Saturday. On Sunday, the strikes were a lot less specific about who they were targeting, but they killed at least two people and wounded several others.

The two people were killed in an attack on an engineering truck headed toward Naqoura, along the southern coast. The truck was in Ziqbin at the time, just a couple miles from Naqoura. Israel claimed the people in the engineering truck were “Hezbollah operatives.”

In reality, the vehicles targeted in various attacks appear to be involved in construction and repair as they are working to fix agriculture areas destroyed in the recent Israeli occupation. Other attacks targeted a bulldozer and people working in the farmland area, wounding several more.

Israel attacked and invaded Lebanon in September, and occupied much of the south. A ceasefire “ended” the war in November, though Israel has continued attacks daily since then, killing hundreds of additional people since the ceasefire began and destroying a large amount of infrastructure. Homes were burned in border villages, and much of the energy infrastructure was demolished by the occupation forces.

Early in the invasion, a big focus was targeting crop fields, destroying orchards, and otherwise ruining the economy of southern Lebanon, which was heavily agriculture-based. Now that Israeli occupiers are mostly gone (some remain at several outposts established by Israel inside Lebanon during the ceasefire), people are trying to rebuild, and fixing up the farmlands is an early priority, with planting season not far off.

The Lebanese Army has sent teams along the southern border today, further to the east near Ayta ash-Shaab. Their teams there are mostly defusing booby-trapped explosives left by Israel and removing roadblocks and other obstacles the Israelis put there to keep the roads impassable.

Several images were released showing barbed wire, road spikes, and explosives that the Lebanese forces have found so far. The UNIFIL peacekeepers are reportedly working in close tandem with them to try to make these areas safe again, though it appears to be a long-term project after months of occupation.