At least two people were killed and ten others wounded after Israel launched a wave of attacks on Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, according to Al Jazeera. The strike came during a fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah and after Israel extended the deadline for withdrawing its troops from Lebanon, deepening tensions around the northern border.
The Israeli military said it had hit multiple Hezbollah targets near the border with Syria in eastern Lebanon. In the army’s account, the sites included underground infrastructure used to develop and manufacture weaponry and border locations used to smuggle weapons into Lebanon. The source presents those as Israel’s stated justifications, not independently verified findings.
Later on Friday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the attack killed two people and wounded ten. That casualty count is the clearest immediate outcome in the packet. The report does not identify the dead or describe whether they were combatants or civilians, so any such claim would go beyond the evidence provided.
The strikes were part of a broader pattern of cross-border pressure during a ceasefire that was already under strain. Under the agreement reached last November, Israel was expected to complete its troop withdrawal by January 26. The packet says it refused to do so, and the deadline was extended to February 18. That extension shows how the ceasefire’s timetable had already slipped before the latest attack.
The ceasefire terms also called for the Lebanese army to deploy in the south as Hezbollah pulled forces back north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres from the border. Israel said the Lebanese army had not fulfilled its side of the bargain and argued that it had no intention of meeting the original deadline. The dispute over implementation is central to understanding why the attack took place despite the ceasefire on paper.
Hezbollah official Ibrahim Moussawi condemned the air raids, calling them a very dangerous violation and a blatant and explicit aggression. He also urged Lebanon to stop Israel’s continued attacks. That reaction signals that Hezbollah was framing the strike not as an isolated operation but as part of an ongoing breach of the agreement.
The packet adds that in the two months from November 27 to Monday, Israel killed at least 83 people in Lebanon and injured at least 228 more, according to data from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health. Those figures are cumulative and reflect repeated violence during the fragile truce period. The source also says earlier in the week, as residents tried to return to homes in the south, Israeli forces killed at least 24 people.
The immediate significance of the Beqaa attack is straightforward: it shows the ceasefire has not ended military activity in Lebanon. The larger significance is that both sides continue to treat the arrangement as conditional and incomplete, with each new strike or deadline shift making the agreement harder to sustain.
For civilians in eastern Lebanon, the result is more familiar than diplomatic language suggests: another night of explosions, another toll of dead and wounded, and another sign that the ceasefire remains vulnerable to collapse.
