Joseph Aoun asks Washington to halt Israeli strikes after seven dead in the south

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called on the United States and other governments on Sunday to stop Israeli air strikes that killed at least seven people in southern Lebanon, a toll that rose through the day from an earlier health ministry count of four. Twenty others were wounded. The strikes hit Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Arab Salim, damaged a Finance Ministry building and destroyed the out-of-service Ghandour Hospital.

Aoun called the attacks "a dangerous escalation" that had reached "Lebanese state institutions" and health facilities. He said they went beyond repeated breaches of the ceasefire and of the June framework agreement that Washington has sponsored between Israel and Lebanon. He held Israel fully responsible and asked the US, in particular, "to urgently act to stop these violations."

The health ministry said two people were killed in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, on the edge of the zone Israeli troops now occupy, and two women were killed in Arab Salim, which sits north of that zone. Later reporting by AFP and the South China Morning Post put the day's dead at seven. The ministry said the Nabatieh al-Fawqa strike "totally destroyed" Ghandour Hospital and called that a breach of international humanitarian law. It added that 17 hospitals across Lebanon have been damaged by Israeli strikes since 2 March and that three hospitals in the south are out of service.

The Israeli army said it was answering two explosive drones that Hezbollah flew at troops near Ali al-Taher ridge, a height in the Nabatieh area that Defence Minister Israel Katz said this week now completes Israel's hold on its self-declared southern security zone. The army said it hit Hezbollah operatives, weapons stores and "a Hezbollah command centre that had been established inside a building previously used as a hospital." It reported no Israeli casualties. Hezbollah has not claimed a drone launch for weeks and has not commented on the ridge.

Israel issued an online evacuation warning at 6 a.m. local time for a building in Arab Salim. The warning did not cover every site that was later hit. Aoun linked Sunday's damage to an earlier pattern: the 19 April strike on the Nabatieh Serail that killed 19 people, including 13 State Security officers, and a subsequent strike on a Finance Ministry building. He said the pattern now reaches "purely civilian government offices and health centers" and is meant to disrupt the state's ability to serve the south.

The United States is the only outside actor Aoun named with a specific job. Washington midwifed the June framework and still runs the channel between the Israeli army and the Lebanese state. A presidential appeal on a Sunday of fresh strikes is a public admission that the channel is not holding the fire. It is also a request that puts the White House on the record at a moment when US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are in Kyiv on a different war file, and when US forces and Iran are exchanging blows around Hormuz.

For people in Nabatieh, the operational facts are narrower. A hospital that was already closed is now rubble. A finance office that paid salaries and processed papers is damaged. Two women are dead in a town that sits outside the Israeli zone. The ridge Israel says it has taken, Ali al-Taher, is the geographic reason the army gave for being in the area at all. If Hezbollah did fly drones at troops there, Sunday's strikes are the reply. If it did not, the reply still landed on a hospital shell and a government building.

Aoun said Lebanon would keep taking steps to protect sovereignty, stability in the south and the safety of civilians. He did not announce a military response. The next move he asked for sits in Washington, not in Nabatieh.