A pair of Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people in southern Lebanon early Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, one of the deadliest attacks in the country since a fragile truce took effect nearly two months ago.
A strike overnight in Ansar, near the city of Nabatieh, killed seven people, including three children, and wounded two others, health ministry officials said. Hours later, Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike on Deir al-Zahrani, killing at least four and wounding 17 others, according to the ministry.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its attacks in the Ansar area had targeted infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reports of civilian deaths or on the attack later on Saturday morning.
The Israeli military said the strikes followed Hezbollah activity in the Ali al-Taher ridge, a strategic hilltop about six miles from the Israeli border that has emerged as a focal point of the conflict in recent months.
Nawaf Salam, Lebanon’s prime minister, called the escalation on Saturday “extremely dangerous,” and said it undermined efforts to establish stability in the country’s south.
“The seven martyrs in the Israeli strike on Ansar town were not ‘military infrastructure,’ and the children and women killed were not military targets,” Mr. Nawaf said in a statement on social media.
Hezbollah condemned the attacks in a statement, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel of escalating the war “in order to strengthen his domestic political position.” The group vowed that the strikes would be “met with an appropriate response.”
A cease-fire reached in mid-June was meant to halt the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and pave the way for establishing a more durable peace. But the truce has since frayed, with fighting between the two sides continuing across southern Lebanon.
The strikes on Saturday come as Israel and Lebanon remain at odds over the terms of a “framework agreement” that was intended to wind down the conflict after months of U.S.-mediated negotiations in Washington and Rome.
Under the agreement, signed on June 26, Israel is expected to gradually withdraw from territory it occupies in southern Lebanon, and the Lebanese Armed Forces would then deploy in those areas and help facilitate the return of residents displaced by the fighting.
The framework has been criticized in Lebanon because it does not set out a timetable for the Israeli withdrawal, and because it links the process to the Lebanese government’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah, which the state has long struggled to do.
Hezbollah itself was not a party to the U.S.-brokered negotiations and has rejected direct talks with Israel.
In a statement published online by his office on Saturday, Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, condemned “Israel’s repeated violations of the framework agreement” along with the “international laws requiring the protection of civilians.”
The war in Lebanon began in early March after Hezbollah fired into Israel in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. The subsequent fighting has killed more than 4,300 people and wounded more than 12,000, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. More than one million people have been displaced as Lebanon’s economic and humanitarian crises have deepened, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Israel has continued to occupy swaths of southern Lebanon. In recent weeks, it has demolished buildings in areas it controls and carried out sporadic attacks in the south, including airstrikes and drone strikes, according to Lebanese officials and state media. The Israeli military says the operations aim to dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure and prevent the group from rearming and threatening northern Israel.
As part of their attack early Saturday, Israeli forces blew up buildings in the southern town of Bint Jbeil and several nearby villages, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.
Israel marks the boundary of the area it controls on its maps, and says that it considers any armed person operating south of that demarcation line as a security threat and a legitimate military target.
In a televised speech on Friday, Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, condemned the recent Israeli strikes, saying they demonstrated the futility of negotiating with Israel. He also criticized the pace and manner of the Israeli withdrawal, and the difficulties faced by the Lebanese Army in taking control of those areas and enabling displaced residents to return.
“These negotiations will bring nothing but shame and disgrace,” Mr. Qassem said.
Hwaida Saad, Aaron Boxerman and Sarah Chaayto contributed reporting.
