Publicly, Israel insists it is at war with Hezbollah (among others) and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant took time today to brag about how many Hezbollah have been eliminated in airstrikes and the ground invasion. Hezbollah is far from the only people targeted in the ongoing attacks, however.
Lebanese Army command reports that a military vehicle, traveling on the highway between Ain Ebel and Hanin, was targeted and destroyed today by an Israeli airstrike. Three Lebanese soldiers were killed in the attack.
These aren’t the first Lebanese soldiers to have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since they launched their invasion of Lebanon last month. Today’s incident, however, seems to be the first deliberate strike on an obviously Lebanese military target, which would mark a substantial escalation.
The Israeli invasion is nominally about fighting Hezbollah, and all of the strikes that have leveled civilian buildings or hit UN peacekeepers are supposedly collateral damage. Deliberately targeting the military is an attack on the Republic of Lebanon.
Israel has offered no comment on today’s attack. Recently, it has claimed in multiple incidents that the proximity of “legitimate” Hezbollah targets as the reason non-Hezbollah targets were hit. There is no indication that Hezbollah was remotely near the targeted vehicle today, and therefore Israel can’t credibly offer that pretext.
Just today, Israel has reportedly carried out scores of strikes and artillery shelling across southern Lebanon, doing substantial damage to the Lebanese towns and villages in the area. The exact number of those killed or injured is unknown.
