Israeli strikes kill seven in southern Lebanon after Hezbollah drones

Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon on 6 September killed seven people, including two women, the Lebanese health ministry said, after the Israeli military described the raids as a response to two explosive drones launched by Hezbollah toward soldiers in the zone it occupies along the border.

The ministry’s first count was lower. An early bulletin listed four dead and 20 wounded across Nabatieh al-Fawqa, the Rahbat neighbourhood of Nabatieh, Arab Salim and Kafr Rumman. Reuters later reported seven dead: two men in a town on the edge of the Israeli-held zone, two women in Arab Salim, which sits well north of that zone, and three more in a separate drone strike on Nabatieh al-Tahta. Two girls were among six people wounded in the Arab Salim strike.

Israel posted an evacuation warning at 6 a.m. local time for a building in Arab Salim that it said Hezbollah was using, and told people to move at least 300 metres away. The military said it shot down one of the two drones and that no Israeli soldiers were hurt. Hezbollah did not issue an immediate comment.

What Beirut says was hit

President Joseph Aoun’s office called the day’s strikes a dangerous escalation and said they destroyed a hospital and damaged a finance ministry building, sites it described as civilian administrations and health centres. Aoun held Israel fully responsible and asked the United States and other governments to act. The National News Agency said the dawn raids hit Nabatieh, Arab Salim, Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Kfar Reman.

The health ministry’s running war tally, cited by Xinhua, stands at 4,358 killed and 12,359 injured in Israeli attacks in Lebanon since 2 March. Those figures cover the whole period, not Sunday alone.

The ridge and the zone

Israel said earlier this week that it had taken operational control of the Ali al-Taher ridge near Nabatieh, a height that had become a flashpoint even after a ceasefire announced in June 2026 and after the older October 2025 Gaza ceasefire language that still sits on paper. Friday’s Israeli strikes, according to The National, killed five and wounded 24 across five locations in the south and, for the first time since June, in the western Bekaa Valley.

Sunday’s sequence is the familiar one: Hezbollah drones toward Israeli troops inside a self-declared security zone, an Israeli warning on social media, then bombs on towns that Lebanon says are civilian. The dispute is over what sat in those buildings. Israel names Hezbollah infrastructure. Aoun names a hospital and a finance office. The casualty list is not in dispute at the same level. Seven dead is the Reuters figure. Four was the first ministry note. Both are on the record.

Whether Israeli forces pull back toward the border, a possibility raised in regional reporting, depends on politics in Jerusalem and on whether the drone launches stop. The Ali al-Taher ridge is now in Israeli hands on Israel’s account. Arab Salim, north of the occupied belt, is not. That is why a strike there, after a public warning, is the event Beirut used to call in the United States.