Eleven killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, authorities say — SkimNews
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- Israeli strikes killed eleven people in southern Lebanon on Saturday, including seven — three children and two women among them — in a strike on a house on the outskirts of Ansar, 70km south of Beirut, that Lebanon's PM called one of the deadliest days since the June agreement.
- The IDF said it killed Hezbollah Radwan Force battalion commander Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan in the Ansar strike and accused him of using his family as human shields inside what it called a military headquarters.
- Later strikes hit the town of Deir al-Zahrani, killing four and wounding five others, according to Lebanon's ministry of health.
- Hezbollah rejected Netanyahu's human shield claims as "false," saying Lebanese civilians "were deliberately targeted in their homes, many of whom were reduced to human remains," followed by invented military-site justifications.
- Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the seven civilian deaths in Ansar as not "military infrastructure," declaring that Israel's right to security "is not subject to negotiation or bargaining."
- President Joseph Aoun called the Ansar strikes — which killed an entire family — "repeated violations" of the June ceasefire framework, saying they sent a "clear message" to US-led negotiations.
- Lebanese and Israeli negotiators are set to meet for an eighth round in September, though no final date has been set, while Israel continues to occupy roughly 5% of Lebanese territory.
Why it matters: The killing of an entire family in Ansar — three children among them — alongside a second deadly strike hours later in Deir al-Zahrani, directly contradicts the June ceasefire's framework even as Lebanese-Israeli negotiators prepare for an eighth round of talks. With Israeli forces still occupying roughly 5% of Lebanese territory and President Aoun explicitly framing the strikes as a message to US-led mediation, the diplomatic track and the military reality on the ground are diverging.
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