Lebanon's health ministry says 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the country's south on Wednesday. The southern border town of Kfarshuba said a municipal councillor and employee were released. Israel's army said it had "apprehended" two people who approached its soldiers. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah has observed an April ceasefire in Lebanon. Hezbollah rejected last week's conditional truce deal. Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2.
Hiram hospital in Tyre was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Thursday, wounding 10 staff members. All three of the city's hospitals have been hit since the start of the latest war between Hezbollah and Israel in early March. Israel has carried out a massive campaign of strikes and a ground invasion in Lebanon, killing more than 3,700 people.
The Israel Defense Forces is preparing an offensive against Hezbollah in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh. The IDF's 36th Division pushed deeper into southern Lebanon in recent days and is now operating on the outskirts of Arnoun, a village a few kilometers from the city. An IDF soldier was moderately injured by an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel has struggled to fend off attacks on troops in southern and northern Israel by Hezbollah's first-person view drones.
Hezbollah claims to have shot down an Israeli military drone over eastern Lebanon. The Heron 1 drone was hit by a missile in the Nahle area in the Bekaa Valley. Hezbollah has targeted Israeli army vehicles and troop concentrations in southern Lebanon with drones and missiles in response to Israeli ceasefire violations and ongoing assaults.
After Bashar al-Assad's fall, Israel moved with extraordinary speed to reshape the strategic landscape of southern Syria. Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 began as a security operation and continued until the recent occupation in Tyre. Syria is perhaps the weakest state in the contemporary Middle East.
Report by the Explosive Weapons Monitor says 22,600 civilians were killed by explosive weapons in 65 countries last year. The toll is a 21% decrease from 2024, due largely to cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel's attacks on Gaza have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since October 2023.
There has been a rapid escalation in hostilities between Iran and the US-Israel alliance since Sunday. Tehran has enacted a tactical shift in its "unity of the theatres" strategy involving its Axis of Resistance allies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. Israel bombed a Hezbollah command centre in the southern Dahiyeh suburbs of Beirut on Sunday. Iran and Houthis retaliated by carrying out limited, largely symbolic missile drone attacks against Israel. This response surprised Israel and US and exposed tensions between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.