Israel continued with its airstrikes against Lebanon on Thursday, attacking a person on a motorcycle in the Tyre District in the south and then launching a flurry of attacks against the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The motorcyclist was attacked on the road near Ain Baal, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. He was killed in the attack but has yet to be identified conclusively in any of the reports, and Israel does not appear to have commented yet.
Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, a drone strike was launched on Zrariyeh in the Sidon District, and IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee carried out a visit to an Israeli military position near the village of Khiam.
More intense strikes were reported in the eastern Bekaa Valley though, the second time this week Israel has carried out large scale attacks in that part of Lebanon. The IDF confirmed the strikes, claiming they targeted Hezbollah “infrastructure” involving manufacturing and storing strategic weapons.
The area targeted was near Yanta, not far from the Syrian border. This area has been the target for Israeli strikes for years, on the claim that Hezbollah was using the area to smuggle weapons. With a Sunni Islamist government in power in Syria, however, it’s no longer believed Hezbollah is as active in transferring arms this way, and the IDF claim is that the site was manufacturing the weapons as well as storing them.
The IDF issued a statement claiming that the presence of the manufacturing site they claimed to have attacked amounted to a “violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
It’s not clear that’s actually the case, and Israel made a similar claim regarding their Monday strikes, which were even farther north near Hermel. It has yet to be confirmed that Hezbollah actually owns either site, not that any understanding exists beyond the ceasefire, which is meant to have Hezbollah removed from the country’s south.
