The Israeli military has warned Lebanese citizens not to return to 60 villages close to the Israeli border for now, warning that those who do so will be putting their lives in danger.
The warning came on the third day of the Lebanon ceasefire, with both Israel and Hizbullah accusing each other of violating the truce.
On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said a drone strike targeted a Hizbullah medium-range rocket launcher in southern Lebanon.
Two Lebanese residents were wounded by IDF fire in the village of Bint Jbeil and the Lebanese news outlet Al Akhbar also reported that the IDF had captured two Lebanese civilians and taken them to an “unknown location”.
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Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has warned that there will be an “intensive war” if Hizbullah violates the ceasefire.
Cross-border exchanges between Hizbullah and Israel began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. Israel stepped up its campaign in September with air strikes. Tanks crossed into Lebanon on September 30th. A ceasefire was announced on Wednesday.
Despite the isolated violations, life is slowly returning to normal on both sides of the border. The IDF’s home front command lifted all restrictions on gatherings south of Haifa. The restrictions had limited the number of people allowed at indoor and outdoor gatherings, due to the danger of militant rocket fire.
Residents who fled the Galilee have started returning to their homes but the communities closest to the border remain largely deserted, with residents waiting to see if calm ensues in the coming weeks as the Lebanese Armed Forces assume responsibility for ensuring security across southern Lebanon.
Under the terms of the agreement, Israeli forces will withdraw from south Lebanon as Lebanese troops deploy over a 60-day period. All Hizbullah fighters will withdraw to north of the Litani river, some 30km from the Israeli borders in most areas.
Fighting continued in Gaza, where Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians overnight and on Friday, many of them in the Nuseirat refugee camp at the centre of the Strip, medics said, after Israeli tanks pulled back from parts of the camp.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave’s eight long-standing refugee camps.
Later on Friday, an Israeli air strike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza Strip, medics said.
Others were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday afternoon, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to “strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip”.
Medics said an Israeli drone on Friday had killed Ahmed Al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, where the army has been operating since early October.
Contacted by Reuters, the Israeli military said it was unaware of a strike occurring in this location or time frame.
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[ What does the ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah entail and will it succeed?Opens in new window ]
Hundreds of women dressed in white silently blocked traffic in central Tel Aviv on Friday calling for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Mr Netanyahu says he is not prepared to end the war in Gaza but indicated that with the end of the Lebanon war conditions have now improved for a deal that would bring home at least some of the 101 hostages in Hamas captivity.
“Conditions for getting the hostages back have changed very, very much for the better. It was [assassinated Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar who thwarted the deal every time; now we have an opportunity. I can’t give details, but I’m doing lots of things moving us forward to a deal,” he said in a television interview.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi urged US president-elect Donald Trump to pressure Mr Netanyahu into accepting a Gaza ceasefire, after Egypt sent a delegation to Israel to discuss a new framework for a deal, involving the release of hostages in stages.
Cairo reportedly wants the US to act as a guarantor for a truce between Israel and Hamas, similar to the role it agreed to play in Lebanon.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,300 people and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins. The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago, triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, Israel has said. Additional reporting: Reuters
