Sept 6 (Reuters) – Israeli strikes killed four people, including two women, in southern Lebanon on Sunday, the Lebanese health ministry said, as Israel retaliated for what it said were Hezbollah drone attacks within areas occupied by its troops.
Despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah agreed in June, the Israeli military is operating in what it has declared as a security zone in southern Lebanon.
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Sunday that two men were killed in a town on the edge of the zone occupied by Israeli troops, while the two women were killed in Arab Salim, which sits well north of the occupied area.
The Israeli military had issued an online evacuation warning at 6 a.m. local (0300 GMT) for areas near a building in Arab Salim that it said it would strike because it was being used by Hezbollah. Two girls were among six others injured in that strike.
The evacuation warning was only the second issued since the June ceasefire announcement.
The first online evacuation order came on August 5 for residents of Mansouri, near Tyre, though Israel had already dropped leaflets on the village just a week into the ceasefire, telling residents to leave ahead of strikes.
Four people were killed and 23 injured across southern Lebanon on Friday, the health ministry said on Saturday, in Israeli strikes launched without evacuation warnings. The Israeli military said those strikes hit Hezbollah weapons storage facilities.
Hezbollah said on Saturday that Israel’s continued escalation aimed to pressure the Lebanese government, which has been engaged in direct talks with Israel under U.S. auspices — negotiations that the Iran-backed group has rejected.
More than 4,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since March 2, when Hezbollah fired at Israel in support of Iran.
(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Writing by Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Saad Sayeed, Maya Gebeily and Joe Bavier)
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