Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah arms smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Israeli army said on Saturday. fragile, centuries-old ceasefire which has seen continuous sporadic fire.
The army said it had hit sites used to smuggle weapons from Syria into Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which it said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or Hezbollah.
Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon several times, citing ceasefire violations, since the ceasefire began on Wednesday.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is not about that the war in Gazawhere the fighting continues.
An Israeli attack on a car killed five people, including three workers from the World Central Kitchen food aid organization, in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Saturday, according to Muneer Alboursh, a senior Palestinian health official. The charity could not be reached for comment and made no mention of the incident on social media.
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The Israeli military said it hit a vehicle carrying a militant involved in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. It said it was investigating reported links to World Central Kitchen, but said the car was unmarked and emergency services had not coordinated with the military, as charities had done during the war.
An eyewitness told CBS News that when two rescuers came to recover the bodies, they were killed in a second attack. Among the dead was Azem Abu Daqa, who had reportedly run one of the charity’s kitchens.
Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images
At the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of one of the men reportedly killed in the strike. A pile of belongings — burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo — were strewn across the hospital floor.
This is the second time World Central Cuisine has been hit by an Israeli attack. In April, an attack on a convoy killed seven personnel, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military said it was a mistake.
The ceasefire between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, mediated by the United States and Francecalls for a two-month interim ceasefire, during which militants must withdraw north of Lebanon’s Litani River and Israeli forces must return to their side of the border.
The repeated outbreaks of violence – with no reports of serious casualties – reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise seemed to be holding. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has accused Israel of doing so in the days since it came into effect.
Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, flocked south to their homes despite warnings from the Israeli and Lebanese armies to stay away from certain areas.
Bilal Hussein / AP
The army said earlier Saturday that its forces, which will remain in southern Lebanon until they gradually withdraw over the 60-day period, had operated to keep “suspects” in the region at bay, without elaborating, and that the troops had located and seized hidden weapons found. in a mosque.
Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to address any alleged violation.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and their attack on southern Israel the day before. Israel and Hezbollah maintained a low-level conflict of cross-border fire for almost a year until Israel escalated its battle with a sophisticated attack that detonated hundreds of Hezbollah fighters’ pagers and walkie-talkies.
More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than seventy people in Israel – more than half of them civilians – and dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ attack in October 2023, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. The Israeli retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. They make no distinction between civilians and combatants in their count, but say more than half of the dead were women and children.
Debora Patta contributed to this report.
