After two people were reported killed over the weekend in southern Lebanon, an addition two people were reported killed today and at least 19 others wounded along both sides of the border, in this case seemingly entirely from unexploded ordinance left there earlier in the war.
The death in Lebanon was a member of security forces working in Ain Ebel’s farmland in Bint Jbeil District. He was working in a field and came upon unexploded ordinance that detonated, killing him.
While investigations are still ongoing, the same thing appears to have happened in northern Israel as well. A student group from ORT Ma’alot school was hiking in the Ramim Ridge area, about a mile west of the Blue Line border with Lebanon.
Israeli paramedics transport an injured man after he arrived by helicopter from an incident involving an explosion in northern Israel, near the country’s border with Lebanon, at Rambam hospital in Haifa, Israel, October 12, 2026. REUTERS/Rami Shlush
The student group similarly came upon an unexploded ordinance, and it similarly detonated, killing one 15-year-old and wounding 19 others from the group to varying degrees. Israeli military helicopters were brought in to evacuate the wounded, and sappers are on the site trying both trying to find the origin of the ordinance, and to make sure no addition explosives are littered in the area.
The origin of any given ordinance in either country is a curiosity more than a relevant factor, as after seven months of major war, itself just the latest in years and years of on-again, off-again Israeli invasions of Lebanon’s south, the region is positively littered with such munitions and such incidents along the frontier are unfortunately not uncommon.
Though these deaths may spur calls for necessary clean-up of the dangerous explosives in areas civilians might be present, the impact of such clean-up will inevitably be insufficient, given the ongoing war and that Israeli is still firing artillery shells into the Lebanese south daily, and every shell that doesn’t explode on impact just adds to the problem.
