Though reports continue to insist the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is holding, Israel continues to carry out multiple attacks across southern and eastern Lebanon, killing at least three more people today, including a child.
The child was killed in Baraachit when an airstrike hit a vehicle there. The civilians in the vehicles largely survived, but one child was wounded in the attack and later died of his wounds.
Two more people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near Kfar Roumine, in Nabatieh District. The identities of the slain here are as yet uncertain, though the IDF claimed the drone was “targeting Hezbollah operatives.”
Smoke billows from southern Lebanon following an Israeli strike, as seen from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, June 19, 2026. REUTERS/Stringer
Following the Kfar Roumine strike, Israeli troops began firing artillery at the village of Yater. Israeli troops also opened fire on two civilian vehicles in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, though no casualties were reported in that incident.
In the course of his daily reiteration that Israeli ground troops would not withdraw from southern Lebanon, Defense Minister Israel Katz also insisted that civilians won’t be allowed to return either.
“What happened in the past when there was a civilian population was roadside bombs and attacks against the soldiers, and therefore we will not allow that,” Katz insisted, saying that there were 200,000 residents of southern Lebanon who “will not return.”
These comments come a week after Amnesty International’s warnings that the forced population transfers in Lebanon could amount to war crimes by Israel. Though Israel denied they were technically population transfers, and claimed they weren’t preventing return of the displaced, Katz’s comments suggest preventing return is very much the stated policy of the Israeli government.
