Lebanon: Israeli attack kills two civilians

A Lebanese security source said an Israeli airstrike killed two civilians collecting water in southern Lebanon on Saturday. The Israeli army said two Hezbollah members were killed in a raid in the area.

The security source, who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said that “two civilians were collecting water from a roadside spring in the Deir Mimas area” when they were killed in an “Israeli airstrike.”

A source close to Hezbollah, who also wished to remain anonymous, said one of the men was a member of the Shiite movement and the father of a fighter who was killed, while the second man was a member of the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement.

The two were “civilians, not combatants,” the source added.

An Israeli army statement said that “soldiers identified two Hezbollah terrorists preparing to fire missiles into Israeli territory in the Deir Mimas area of ​​southern Lebanon.”

“Soon after identification, the IAF (air force) attacked the terrorists,” the statement added.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces almost daily in support of its ally Hamas.

Lebanon National News Agency said an “enemy drone” killed two men in the same area on Saturday, identifying one of them as a local council member of the Amal movement in the nearby village of Kfar Kila.

It was said that they had collected water from the spring “to use for the livestock in Kfar Kila”.

The Amal movement announced in a statement that one of its members born in 1964 had been murdered.

In Lebanon, more than 500 people have been killed in cross-border violence since October, most of them fighters, but also more than 90 civilians, according to a AFP to match.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people were killed, most of them soldiers, according to authorities.

The violence is largely confined to the border region and raises fears of an open conflict between the two warring parties, who last fought each other in the summer of 2006.