Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon kill 16 after fresh ceasefire
Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon just hours after a U.S.-backed ceasefire, killing at least 16 people, including two children, and forcing 47 more from their homes.
The ceasefire was barely old when the strikes resumed, and civilians in southern Lebanon paid the price. Israeli attacks on Saturday morning killed at least 16 people, including two children, in a string of villages that Lebanese reports said included Nabatieh al-Fawqa, Arabsalim, Deir al-Zahrani and Doueir.
Lebanon’s civil defense said it also injured 12 people, transported the wounded to hospitals and evacuated 47 others to safer areas. The dead included Lebanese army soldier Jameel Nahhal, underscoring how quickly a declared truce gave way to fresh bloodshed on the ground.
The violence exposed how fragile the new ceasefire remained after the U.S. said Israel and Hezbollah had implemented it at President Donald Trump’s request. Reuters reported that the agreement was due to begin at 4 p.m. local time on Friday, after a senior Israeli official and two Hezbollah sources confirmed it. But Lebanese sources said Israeli strikes continued in the first hour after the truce took effect.
Israel said its military came under fire from more than 50 Hezbollah launches overnight and responded by striking rocket launch positions, weapons storage facilities and command centers in southern Lebanon. The back-and-forth followed a sharp escalation on Thursday and Friday, including the killing of four Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon.
The rising toll in Lebanon continued to climb even before the ceasefire date arrived. Reuters reported that Israeli strikes had killed at least 47 people in Lebanon since midnight on June 19, before the truce took effect. Saturday’s deaths added another layer of grief for families already sheltering, fleeing and burying the dead as the front line shifted through their towns.
The latest escalation also came amid inflammatory rhetoric from Israel’s far right. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Friday that “all of Lebanon must burn,” a remark that captured the brittle atmosphere surrounding a ceasefire that existed on paper even as the strikes kept falling.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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