An Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon has killed three people, including a 3-year-old child, according to Lebanon’s state-run news agency and the health ministry it cited.
The strike hit a car in the village of Yanouh on Monday, the Lebanese National News Agency reported. The report said the deaths included a young child, making the attack one of the most severe civilian casualties reported in the area in recent days.
The Israeli military later said it struck Hezbollah artillery official Ahmad Salami. It also said it was aware of a claim that uninvolved civilians were killed and that the case was under review. That statement did not directly address the Lebanese account of the victims’ identities, leaving the civilian toll unresolved in official Israeli messaging.
The same AP report also said Israeli forces had seized a local official with the Sunni Islamist group al-Jamaa al-Islamiya in a separate operation in southern Lebanon early on Monday and taken him to Israel for questioning. Lebanese state media identified the man as Atwi Atwi and said he was taken in the village of Hebbarieh, near the border with Israel.
The incident fits into a pattern that has continued even after the U.S.-brokered ceasefire that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024. Since then, Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes and ground incursions in Lebanon, and the United Nations says those operations have left more than 100 civilians dead.
Israel says the operations are meant to remove Hezbollah strongholds and other threats along the border. The latest strike, however, again highlights the risk that military actions in southern Lebanon continue to pose to civilians as well as armed groups.
Lebanon’s state media said the village strike killed the child and two other people, but the AP report did not include further identifying details about the additional victims. Nor did the packet provide any independent confirmation of the Israeli military’s target assessment beyond its own statement.
The broader context remains volatile. The Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, according to figures cited in the AP report, and the country is still living with the destruction and political fallout of that conflict. Monday’s strike shows that the ceasefire has not ended the cycle of airstrikes, arrests and cross-border accusations that continue to define the frontier.
For civilians in villages near the border, the practical meaning is simple: the risk of sudden violence remains high, and even a brief report from state media can quickly turn into a death toll that includes children.
