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Lebanon’s Health Ministry put the death toll at 11 from Israeli strikes that hit a house on the edge of Ansar village and another in Deir al-Zahrani on Saturday. The National News Agency said seven people including three children and two women died in the Ansar attack with two others wounded while four died and 17 were injured in Deir al-Zahrani. According to AP News the strikes represented the deadliest attacks on Lebanon in the weeks since it agreed to a U.S.-mediated peace framework with Israel that left Israeli troops inside occupied southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.
The Israeli military said in a statement it struck Hezbollah infrastructure in Ansar and on Ali Taher hill in response to actions against its soldiers that seriously wounded three. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office stated that Hezbollah violated the ceasefire by attacking Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon. A Reuters dispatch reported that the military described one target as a central headquarters of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force unit and said it later learned civilians had been placed in the compound.
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said during a speech the day before the strikes that the framework agreement was an Israeli order written in Israeli ink that the Lebanese authorities have signed onto. The Iran-backed group has rejected the terms as surrender while Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz stated during a visit to the south that Israel would not withdraw from the regions it controls until Hezbollah is disarmed. A U.S. State Department official separately told reporters that a permanent Israeli military presence was not consistent with commitments in the deal with Lebanon’s government.
Lebanese authorities have placed the overall death toll from the latest round of hostilities at more than 4,300 since March 2026 when Hezbollah fired projectiles into Israel. The health ministry figures encompass both civilian and combatant deaths with many resulting from repeated Israeli operations in the south. Reuters data shows the truce signed in June has faced near-daily tests from strikes and responses north of the Litani River where Israel maintains a declared security zone.
Additional Israeli airstrikes targeted a valley next to Ansar marking one of the deepest incursions into Lebanon in two months according to the National News Agency. The agency also reported strikes on a strategic area overlooking Nabatiyeh and main roads leading to the city. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun’s office has described similar actions as a dangerous escalation that targeted civilian areas.
The incidents have overwhelmed local medical facilities already strained by months of conflict with demand for treatment surging after each exchange. Israeli forces continue to operate in parts of southern Lebanon despite the framework calling for the Lebanese army to assume control once Hezbollah is disarmed. Officials on both sides have traded accusations of ceasefire violations with no immediate resolution in sight.
