Three Lebanese soldiers were killed in an Israeli air strike on an army centre in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, the country’s military said. Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health reported that at least 17 civilians living near the facility were wounded.
The Lebanese army announced the deaths in a social media post late on Tuesday, describing the site as an army centre in the southern town. The supplied report said the Israeli military had not commented on that strike at the time. No information in the evidence indicated that the Lebanese troops were taking part in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Sarafand deaths raised the reported number of Lebanese soldiers killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 to 41. Before the strike, army spokesperson Fadi Eid had told the Associated Press that 38 personnel had died in such attacks during that period. Lebanese soldiers had continued providing security for civilians and participating in search-and-rescue work while the conflict unfolded around them.
The attack followed another deadly strike on a Lebanese military position two days earlier. Israeli forces bombed a post in Mari in the southeastern Hasbaiyya province, killing two soldiers and leaving three others critically wounded, according to the Al Jazeera report supplied for this event.
Lebanon’s government had said on November 18 that it intended to submit a complaint to the United Nations Security Council over what it called repeated Israeli attacks on its army. It accused Israeli forces of recurrent violations of international law. Those are the Lebanese government’s stated allegations; the supplied evidence did not include Israel’s response to them.
The strike came during an especially lethal period across Lebanon. The Health Ministry said Israeli attacks over the preceding 24 hours killed 28 people and wounded 107. It put the broader toll since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began in October 2023 at 3,544 dead and more than 15,000 injured.
International peacekeepers in southern Lebanon were also facing danger. On the same Tuesday, Italy’s Defence Ministry said eight rockets hit the Italian contingent’s headquarters at Chama, though no injuries were reported there. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said four Ghanaian peacekeepers were injured when a rocket, probably fired by a non-state actor inside Lebanon, struck their base in Ramyah. Investigations into those launches were continuing.
More than 20 UNIFIL personnel had been injured during the previous two months, and several bases had sustained damage in Israeli attacks that Israel said were unintended. UNIFIL had rejected Israeli demands that it leave southern Lebanon.
The loss of three soldiers at Sarafand therefore formed part of a wider pattern of military and civilian harm extending beyond direct exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, adding pressure on Lebanon’s national forces and the international mission operating amid the conflict.
