Four people, including a rescuer, killed Friday by Israeli strikes in Lebanon
Four people, including a rescuer, were killed on Friday May 31 by Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and an affiliated organization announced, with the Shiite movement responding with rocket fire towards Israel.
“An Israeli drone targeted an ambulance […] One rescuer was killed and another injured” in Naqoura, a town bordering Israel, the operations room of the Islamic Health Committee, a group affiliated with Hezbollah, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). The National Information Agency (ANI, official) confirmed that a “Israeli drone targeted an Islamic Health Committee ambulance in Naqoura”.
The Islamic Health Committee later told AFP that a woman had been killed and four other people injured in an Israeli raid on the town of Adloun, 30 kilometers from the border. According to ANI, an Israeli drone attacked a house which was “completely destroyed”.
In a statement, the Israeli army said its fighter jets had “hit a military structure” in the Naqoura region “where the activity of a terrorist cell has been identified”. She also reported the interception of a drone coming from Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” on northern Israel “in response to the attack” of Naqoura, and claimed responsibility for other attacks on Friday, including with drones and missiles.
He announced that two of his fighters had been killed, but without specifying in which region. A Source close to Hezbollah said one of the victims was killed in a bombing in Ain Qana, about 45 kilometers from the Israeli border.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said “deeply disturbed to hear that an ambulance was targeted”. “Twenty health workers killed since October 8”he wrote on X.
Nearly eight months of violence have left nearly 450 dead in Lebanon, the majority of them combatants and more than 80 civilians, according to an AFP count. Twenty rescue workers, including ten members of the Islamic Health Committee, were among the dead. On the Israeli side, at least 14 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed in this violence, according to the authorities. At the end of March, the UN deplored the attacks “unacceptable” since the start of violence against rescue workers in Lebanon, many of whom are affiliated with political groups.
On Monday, a strike attributed to Israel by Lebanese state media targeted a motorcycle in front of a hospital run by the Islamic Health Committee in Bint Jbeil, in southern Lebanon. Two civilians were killed, according to the hospital director.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry announced Friday that it had filed a complaint with the UN Security Council against Israel over a May strike on a car, which also injured several schoolchildren who were traveling on a passing bus. there. According to a Source close to Hezbollah, a fighter from the movement was killed in this attack.
The ministry considered that this raid constituted “a violation of international humanitarian law” and called on the Security Council to “condemn Israel’s direct, deliberate and repeated attacks against civilians”.
In a televised message, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his fighters were capable of penetrating northern Israel, but that they had not done so until now.
