At least 38 people were killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon on Saturday, the Lebanese news agency reported.
Israeli strikes targeted the outskirts of Nabatieh, Tyre, the Bekaa Valley and Jezzine in the eastern Lebanese mountains. A motorcycle was also hit in the town of Arab Salim.
An attack on Qennarit, south of Sidon, killed nine people and injured 22, local media reported.
A Lebanese soldier was killed in a strike in southern Lebanon, the state news agency NNA reported, while four members of one family were killed in an attack on the southern town of Barish.
In a statement on X, the Lebanese armed forces said the strikes hit “wide areas in the south all the way to the Bekaa Valley”, leaving more dead and wounded and causing extensive damage to property.
The continuation of “brutal Israeli attacks” appeared to be aimed at obstructing any solution that could restore stability in Lebanon, the statement added.
Iran responded to these strikes by blocking the Strait of Hormuz again. The Fars agency attributed the move to what it described as “America’s blatant breach of promise and breach of treaty” over the implementation of a “first paragraph of the end-of-war agreement”.
Direct talks towards a peace deal between Israel and Lebanon are set to resume in Washington next week. On Friday, both parties agreed to a ceasefire, but it was violated minutes after it came into effect with air strikes in the Nabatieh region.
The Israeli army said on Saturday that it had “struck dozens of Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites and terrorists in southern Lebanon throughout the night” in response to what it described as repeated ceasefire violations by the group.
Hezbollah has said it remains committed to the ceasefire but will respond to any attempt by Israel to establish or maintain a military presence in Lebanese territory, framing such actions as violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently been criticised by US President Donald Trump, his biggest ally. “Too many people have been killed. You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah,” he said at the G7 summit in France.
Vice President JD Vance doubled down at a press conference, saying: “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
“Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in,” he added.
Violence escalated on Friday after four Israeli soldiers, including a senior officer, were killed when a tank was struck in an attack claimed by Hezbollah. The group said it had acted in response to Israeli violations of a previous ceasefire agreement, including advances on the ground.
The Israeli strikes that followed killed 47 people, according to local authorities, across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
