Israeli strike kills 4, including school principal, in south Lebanon: Health Ministry

Four people, including a school principal, were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon on Monday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said, in one of the deadliest attacks in weeks.

The strike tests a ceasefire announced last month that has sharply reduced, but not eliminated, violence in southern Lebanon, the main arena for conflict between Iran-aligned Hezbollah and Israel.

The Israeli military said it struck a vehicle carrying four people who were approaching what it calls a “security zone” in southern Lebanon and posed a threat to its forces.

The Health Ministry identified the victims as school principal Esperanza Ghandour, her mother, a female domestic worker and a male foreign laborer.

Ghandour had been checking on repairs at her war-damaged home in Nabatieh and was returning when the vehicle was struck, according to a local source and Lebanon’s state news agency.

At Najdeh Hospital in Nabatieh, a health official told Reuters by phone that staff heard the strike before the victims arrived.

“We heard the explosion and saw the smoke rising,” the official said. The strike took place in an area that local residents had considered safe from attack, he added.

Israeli drones strikes have continued since the ceasefire, but less frequently than before, he said.

Fear of being forced to flee again

Israel has established what it describes as a security zone extending about 10 kilometres into southern Lebanon along the border, saying it is needed to protect northern Israeli communities from attacks by Hezbollah.

Israeli forces remain deployed in parts of the zone despite the ceasefire, while Lebanon says the Israeli presence violates its sovereignty.

For residents of Nabatieh and surrounding towns, the strike shattered what little sense of security had returned under the ceasefire.

Ali Safa, 32, said his family had been forced to flee southern Lebanon several times since a truce was announced in late June.

“It brought the fear back all over again,” Safa said of Monday’s strike.

“Some of the few businesses that had reopened closed again because of the daily strikes, and some families left. There’s always this small hope that at least you’re back in your own home, but every day you wonder whether you’ll have to leave again.”

Lebanon has borne the deadliest spillover of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran since Hezbollah opened a front in support of Tehran on March 2, triggering an Israeli offensive and ground incursion into southern Lebanon.

The ceasefire was negotiated by the United States and Qatar with help from Iran. Tehran has insisted on a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of talks aimed at ending the wider regional conflict, while Israel has scaled back attacks in Lebanon at Washington’s behest.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

On the Israeli side, at least 36 people — including 32 soldiers and four civilians — have been killed in the fighting, according to Israeli authorities.