An Israeli drone strike destroyed a car on the road between Jarmaq and Kafr Rumman on Thursday, killing two engineers working for the private Meamar Construction company. One other civilian was reported wounded in the attack.
The two were identified as Ahmad Saad and Mustafa Rizq. Though all evidence is that they had been working for the construction company for some time, some media outlets purported them to be “Hezbollah members,” seemingly by virtue of a US claim several years ago that Meamar Construction had ties to Hezbollah.
The claim, going back to 2020, was that Hezbollah used Meamar in some way to conceal financing for the organization. That’s a big distinction from two of their employees in a small town being active Hezbollah members, for which no evidence exists.
Southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh Governorate during the ceasefire ©MSF
This comes just a day after the UN issued a statement verifying that Israeli strikes on Lebanon had killed at least 103 civilians since the ceasefire began in November. All evidence available suggests this strike brings that count to 105.
One Western diplomat was quoted anonymously in The National said it was considered “a ceasefire in name only” and that Israel essentially strikes wherever they want inside Lebanon. The ceasefire was meant to end all strike across the border, and indeed Hezbollah has not fired a single rocket into Israel since it began.
The same cannot be said of Israel, which carries out strikes on a virtually daily basis, and has killed hundreds of people, many of them civilians. UN Rights Chief Volker Turk called for more accountability in the ceasefire to allow the reconstruction of southern Lebanon after last year’s war.
The US and France were meant to oversee the ceasefire, but by and large they’ve not publicly commented on the thousands of Israeli violations. Israel has been very public about continue to strike Lebanon, though they insist everyone they killed was a Hezbollah leader of some sort, despite evidence to the contrary.
