A flurry of Israeli strikes targeted southern and eastern Lebanon on Sunday night and Monday, killing at least five people. Four of the slain were reportedly members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and were killed near the Lebanon-Syria border.
The IDF declared them terrorists who were operating in the Majdal Anjar area, near Masna. The four were in a car at the time of the Israeli attacks, which killed all within the vehicle. They have not been identified beyond that group affiliation so far.
The Lebanese Health Ministry confirmed the toll of this strike, though they were not able to confirm the identities of the slain. Islamic Jihad has similarly not issued any statement relating to the loss of their putative members.
An Israeli strike was also reported against the southern town of Hanin in the Bint Jbeil District, killing one person. The IDF claimed that the person in that strike was a Hezbollah operative, though they provided no evidence that this was the case.
The claim centered on the idea that the operative was in some way restoring Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. In practice, this usually means using a construction vehicle to clear rubble from farmland, or carrying out general repairs of the damage done in Israel’s 2024 invasion.
This has been a persistent problem in southern Lebanon since the ceasefire went into effect in November of 2024, where any attempt to restore southern Lebanon to pre-war conditions is being interpreted by Israel as necessarily supporting Hezbollah, and serves as a pretext for military strikes.
This is in keeping with Israel’s long-term goal to see southern Lebanon forcibly depopulated, a plan described as the creation of a “Trump economic zone,” and in addition to killing people trying to restore the south, they’ve been spraying concentrated herbicide on Lebanese farmland, likely limiting its ability to grow crops in the future.
