Israeli strikes kill 1, injure 11 including schoolchildren in southern Lebanon

An Israeli airstrike on a car in southern Lebanon on Wednesday killed one person and wounded 11 others, including several schoolchildren travelling in a nearby bus, Lebanon’s health ministry and state media said, marking another surge in cross-border hostilities despite a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war that took effect a year ago.

The latest strike hit the village of Tiri in the morning hours. According to the state-run National News Agency, a school bus happened to be passing by the targeted vehicle when the missile landed. The bus driver and multiple students sustained injuries from shrapnel and shattered glass. The identity of the person killed inside the car has not yet been officially confirmed. The Israeli military offered no comment.

The attack came just hours after an Israeli drone strike late on Tuesday on the densely populated Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, near Sidon, killed 13 people and wounded several others. That strike — which Israel claimed targeted a Hamas training compound — was one of the deadliest since the conflict between Israel and Hamas-Hezbollah began in 2023. Hamas denied Israel’s assertion, insisting the site hit was a sports playground.

On Wednesday, Lebanese authorities barred journalists from entering Ein el-Hilweh, though normal movement was visible around the camp. At the blast site in Tiri, paramedics were seen combing through debris for human remains near a blood-stained wall. Several cars burned or ripped apart by the explosion lay nearby, their windows blown out.

The escalations come against a tense political backdrop. Earlier this year, Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s refugee camps began surrendering their weapons to the Lebanese state. The government has also pledged to negotiate Hezbollah’s disarmament, but the group has refused, citing continued Israeli occupation of strategic border hills and what it calls “daily Israeli aggression.”

The United States has recently increased pressure on Lebanon to move faster on containing Hezbollah. Washington even cancelled a planned visit by Lebanon’s army chief Gen. Rudolph Haikal after a Lebanese military statement blamed Israel for destabilising the south — a move US officials reportedly viewed as inflammatory.

The most recent Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which began on 8 October 2023 after Hamas attacked southern Israel, has already claimed more than 4,000 lives in Lebanon and left an estimated $11 billion in damage, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people — including 80 soldiers — were killed.

With AP/PTI inputs