Eleven people were killed in separate Israeli attacks in Lebanon as a newly established ceasefire with Hezbollah faced its most serious strain since taking effect the previous week. The deaths came during an exchange in which Hezbollah fired at an Israeli military position and Israel responded with multiple air raids.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said five people were killed in Haris and four in Talloussah, both in southern Lebanon, during the later strikes. Earlier, Lebanon's State Security agency said officer Mahdi Khreis was killed by an Israeli rocket in the Nabatieh district. Another person was reported killed in neighboring Marjayoun, while a drone attack in northeastern Lebanon injured a Lebanese soldier.
Hezbollah described its fire on an Israeli base in the Kfar Chouba hills as an initial defensive warning. The group said it was responding to repeated Israeli breaches of the truce, including air attacks, gunfire directed at civilians in the south and flights by Israeli aircraft over Lebanese territory. Kfar Chouba lies in a disputed area claimed by Lebanon.
Israel had promised a severe response to the Hezbollah strike and said its own operations were intended to enforce the ceasefire. The agreement, however, called for all sides to stop attacking. The renewed violence therefore sharpened questions about whether the monitoring process could address alleged violations before they triggered a broader resumption of fighting.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who served as Lebanon's chief negotiator, accused Israel of dozens of violations, including air raids and the demolition of homes near the border. The United States offered a more positive assessment. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the arrangement had broadly halted the previous daily fighting and that Washington would use the agreement's monitoring mechanism to deal with potential breaches.
The United States and France brokered the truce after a war that killed nearly 4,000 people in Lebanon. Under its terms, Israeli forces were to withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days. Hezbollah was to move its armed presence north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese army deployed across the south as the area's sole armed force.
The pause had allowed hundreds of thousands of displaced people to begin returning home. Monday's casualties showed how exposed that recovery remained. Each side framed its actions as a response to the other, creating an escalation cycle that the ceasefire was designed to interrupt. Whether the agreement endured would depend not only on restraint in the field, but also on the ability of its guarantors and monitoring system to resolve competing claims quickly.
