Israeli strikes kill four in southern Lebanon after Hezbollah drone launch

Israeli aircraft struck several towns in southern Lebanon at dawn on Sunday, killing four people and wounding 20, according to an initial count from Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health. The dead included two people in Nabatieh al-Fawqa and two women in Arab Salim. The wounded list included a woman and a child in Nabatieh's Rahibat neighbourhood, two children among six injured in Arab Salim, and four people in Kfar Reman.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah had launched two explosive drones at soldiers inside the zone Israel now calls a security belt in the south. It said one drone was shot down and that no Israeli soldiers were hurt. In a second message it told residents of a marked building in Arab Salim, and of neighbouring structures, to move at least 300 metres away. Lebanon's National News Agency said that after the warning, aircraft hit a different house in the town, destroying it and killing the two women.

President Joseph Aoun's office called the raids a dangerous escalation and said they had destroyed a hospital and damaged a finance ministry building. Hezbollah had not issued a public comment by mid-afternoon.

A ceasefire that has not held the line

A United States-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah was announced in June. Israeli forces have stayed in parts of the south and this week said they had taken operational control of the Ali al-Taher ridge near Nabatieh. Arab Salim sits north of that belt. Sunday's warning map, circulated by the army's Arabic-language spokesperson, put a keep-clear ring around a building the army said Hezbollah was using.

Friday's raids had already raised the week's toll. The health ministry said those strikes killed four or five people and wounded more than 20 across the south and, for the first time since June, in the western Bekaa. An 18-year-old woman was among the dead in Mayfadoun on Saturday, NNA reported.

From 2 March to 5 September the ministry's running count stood at 4,358 killed and 12,359 wounded in Israeli attacks in Lebanon. Those figures cover the period after Hezbollah entered the wider war in March and Israel answered with air strikes and a ground operation.

Talk of a narrower zone

Kan TV News in Israel reported on Saturday that the army is preparing a partial pullback and a thinner security strip along the border. That report has not been confirmed by a formal order. Sunday's raids, including the Arab Salim warning and the hits on Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Kfar Reman, show the present line is still being enforced by air.

NNA said one of the Kfar Reman targets was the home of former mayor Ali Moallem, near the town's industrial area. Several people there were wounded. The health ministry labelled its Sunday numbers preliminary. Identification work in Arab Salim was still under way while rescue crews used an excavator on a destroyed house.

The immediate question is whether the 72-hour diplomatic window in Kyiv and Moscow has any twin in the Levant. Nothing in Sunday's statements from Jerusalem or Beirut pointed that way. The drones, the warning, the four dead and the hospital claim now sit on the same day as a reported plan to shrink the Israeli footprint. Those two facts do not yet meet.