Israel continued with their airstrikes against southern Lebanon early this week, killing at least four people over a 48 hour period. They claimed three of the people in question were Hezbollah members, though evidence to suggest this was scant.
The strikes included a Monday incident in Zibqin, where an Israeli drone attacked a vehicle and killed a married couple. The husband was identified as Hassan Atwi, a man who was blinded in the Israeli pager attack in 2024. The IDF insisted he was a key member of Hezbollah’s ‘air defense unit.” His wife, Zainab Raslan, was the only one of the four slain that the IDF did not accuse of being Hezbollah.
The strikes continued Tuesday, with strikes killing one person in Deir Aames and another in Yater. The Yater person, though a construction worker riding a bulldozer at the time, was purported to be in some way trying to revitalize Hezbollah infrastructure in the area.
The IDF later claimed the Deir Aames man was Mahmoud Ali Issa, who they presented as a “Hezbollah representative” from a nearby village. As is so often the case in Israeli strikes, they offered no evidence this was actually the case.
Israeli drones were actively flying at low altitude over multiple Lebanese towns and villages in the area Wednesday morning, suggesting more attacks are likely to come. In addition to strikes in the south, IDF drones attacked sites in the northeast on Monday, though no casualties were reported in that area.
Israel has been escalating strikes against Lebanon for months, and strikes are happening on a daily basis. The ceasefire signed in November was meant to see Israel remove troops from the area by January, though that never happened, and ground troops remain active in several areas of southern Lebanon.
