Israeli strikes on Kfar Reman kill at least 11 in south Lebanon

Israeli air attacks on the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Reman in the first hours of 7 September killed at least 11 people, Lebanese authorities said, in one of the deadliest days of bombardment in the south in recent weeks.

Lebanon's National News Agency reported that fighter jets struck a residential building shortly after midnight near the Shuyuiya roundabout, killing nine people including two children and wounding others in the same house. A separate drone strike on a civilian vehicle in the town killed paramedics from the Amal movement's Risala Scouts, the agency said. Reuters, citing the health ministry, later put the combined death toll at 12, including two children, four women and a medic.

Counts still differ by source. The health ministry told the BBC that eight people died in the building strike and one paramedic in the vehicle. Al Jazeera, working from NNA, kept the figure at 11 including two children and two medics. What the accounts share is the place, the hour and the absence of an online evacuation warning before the Kfar Reman hits.

The Israeli military said the sequence began after Hezbollah launched two explosive drones at Israeli forces on the Ali Taher ridge. No Israeli soldiers were wounded, the army said. It then struck what it called Hezbollah infrastructure, including a weapons store, and said it targeted people transferring weapons in the Kfar Rumman area. The army said steps were taken to limit harm to bystanders. It did not, in the first hours, give a public account of why no warning was posted for that town.

Other overnight strikes hit Nabatieh, Arab Salim and Deir al-Zahrani. At Deir al-Zahrani the army did issue an evacuation warning and said it hit a building near a Hezbollah site used to launch an explosive drone. Sunday's raids in the same district had already killed seven people and wounded about 20, Lebanese officials said, after earlier Hezbollah drone launches.

Kfar Reman sits a few hundred metres from the zone the Israeli military calls its security belt inside southern Lebanon. That geography is why a ceasefire announced in June has not produced quiet. Israel says it is enforcing the deal against Hezbollah rearmament south of the Litani. Hezbollah and the Lebanese state say Israel is expanding a campaign that has already killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon since 2 March, according to the health ministry figure carried by Reuters.

President Joseph Aoun called the recent strikes a dangerous escalation that threatened the ceasefire. Residents quoted by Israeli and Lebanese outlets said families had been staying in the destroyed building. Saleh Madlij, speaking near the rubble, asked sarcastically whether there were missiles in the house and said he would not leave.

The pattern is now familiar. A Hezbollah drone or rocket is launched at Israeli troops in occupied ground. Israel answers with air strikes on towns just behind the line. Casualty lists from the Lebanese health system include children and emergency workers. Israeli statements list weapons transfers and launch sites. Neither side has shown an interest in returning to the June text as written.

For people in Nabatieh district the operational question is narrower. Warnings sometimes arrive on social media minutes before a strike. On Monday morning in Kfar Reman they did not. Paramedics who drove toward a burning building became a second target. That is the fact that will sit in any later inquiry, if one is ever held, and it is the fact families in the town already have.