Smoke rises from the site of explosions conducted by Israeli troops in the southern Lebanese village of al-Qantara on 28 April 2026. [Getty]
Five members of the same family were killed in an airstrike in southern Lebanon overnight on Wednesday, as the Israeli military continues to flout a supposed ceasefire with Hezbollah.
The strike targeted a building belonging to the Bahja family in the village of Jebchit in Nabatieh governorate, Lebanon’s state news agency said, destroying the building and killing Mohammad Jawad Bahja and his wife Lotfiya, as well as Amani Jaber and her two children, it said.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Tuesday said Israeli forces had committed a “heinous crime” after a double-tap strike in Majdal Zoun killed five people, including three emergency workers.
They were among at least eight people killed in Israeli strikes on Tuesday.
“Targeting members of the Civil Defence in Majdal Zoun while carrying out their humanitarian duty is a new described war crime committed by Israel,” Salam wrote in a post on X.
“It represents a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international humanitarian law.”
Meanwhile, two Lebanese troops were wounded in a targeted strike on a patrol, Lebanon’s army said.
Hezbollah confirmed it had launched drone attacks against Israeli troops in several areas of the south, killing an Israeli military contractor and wounding another.
The contractors had been involved in the ongoing Israeli demolition campaign in the south, which has seen entire villages wiped off the map.
The ongoing attacks come despite an alleged ceasefire brokered by the Trump administration earlier this month.
Since the 16 April agreement came into force, Israel has launched near-daily attacks and has continued to demolish civilian infrastructure inside its declared “buffer zone”.
It has also continued to forcibly displace civilians in the south, on Tuesday ordered residents of more than a dozen villages in Tyre district to flee north.
Hezbollah has responded with drone and rocket fire targeting Israeli forces occupying territory in the south.
The alleged ceasefire came as part of US efforts to broker a peace deal between the two countries that would hinge on the Lebanese military forcibly disarming Hezbollah.
Israel sharply escalated its attacks across Lebanon on 2 March after Hezbollah began launching rockets across the border in retaliation for the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
More than 2,500 people have been killed and another 7,863 injured in the bombardment, according to government figures.
Among the dead are more than 100 health workers and seven journalists, while more than one million people have been forcibly displaced, creating one of the country’s largest humanitarian crises of recent years.
