Israel continues to escalate their airstrikes against southern Lebanon, with growing talk of a new “large-scale” war against Lebanon potential in the offing. Sunday, at least three more people were killed in Israeli strikes, and one wounded.
The first incident was in Yater, where the strike targeted a motorcycle, killing one person and wounding another. Not long after, a second strike was reported on a car near Baraachit, killing a second person. At almost the same time, a third strike was reported in the town of Jwaya, near Tyre, killing a municipal council member.
The IDF claimed that all three targets were Hezbollah operatives, and further claimed that two of the deaths, the one in Yater and the one near Baraachit, were Hezbollah operatives. They said the third strike was still “under review.”
As usual, the IDF provided no evidence that any of these people were actually Hezbollah, and other reports suggested the slain were civilians. The IDF alleged the person in the Baraachit area was Hezbollah’s “representative in the village” and was liaising with the group on economic matters, which suggests that the link to Hezbollah was tenuous, even for Israeli allegations without evidence.
The IDF statement also claimed that all the people targeted were “attempting to reestablish Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure,” a pro-forma claim that’s almost always included in official allegations by the IDF, but rarely seems to mean much of anything.
Israel has defended their constant violations of the ceasefire by claiming Hezbollah is rebuilding in the south in violation of the ceasefire themselves. UN officials, however, have said they see no evidence of such a thing happening, and so the IDF allegations continue to look dubious, but also to be reported without question in the Israeli press.
