Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon killed at least five people on the event date of 2026-04-07, according to the supplied reporting, which also said the Israeli army expanded its ground operations in the south.
Lebanon’s National News Agency said three people were killed and several others wounded when Israeli warplanes struck a house in Maarakeh, in the Tyre district. In separate incidents, the agency reported that one person was killed in a drone strike in Deir al-Zahrani in the Nabatieh region, and another person died in a dawn strike on the town of Zebdine, also in Nabatieh.
The attacks came as the Israeli military said it had deployed an additional division into southern Lebanon. In the supplied report, the army said the 98th Division joined the 91st, 36th, 146th and 162nd divisions as part of an expansion of ground operations. The military said the additional forces were intended to reinforce the front defensive line and remove threats to northern residents.
The article also said Israeli media reported the army did not plan at that stage to push deeper than about 20 kilometres north of the border. That detail is presented in the source as media reporting rather than an official military line, so it should be read cautiously.
The broader context is an already escalating conflict. The supplied report says Israel has carried out airstrikes and a ground offensive in southern Lebanon since a cross-border attack by Hezbollah on March 2, despite a ceasefire that took effect in November 2024. It also says the number of people killed in Israeli strikes since March 2 rose to 1,497, with 4,639 others injured.
Those casualty figures underline the scale of the violence, but the article does not provide an independent on-the-ground verification of each death. Instead, it relies on the Lebanese agency and the military statement cited in the supplied source. That is sufficient for a short news report, but not for claims beyond what is explicitly in the packet.
The report further says Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, arguing that its attacks were retaliation for continued Israeli strikes and the killing of Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike on February 28. Because that allegation appears only in the supplied source and relates to a sensitive, high-risk claim, it is included here only as part of the source’s description of the wider conflict context.
For residents in southern Lebanon, the immediate reality is the same regardless of the broader battlefield narrative: more strikes, more casualties, and more displacement risk. The reported deaths in Maarakeh, Deir al-Zahrani and Zebdine show that the fighting was not confined to a single flashpoint but spread across multiple towns in the south.
With Israeli forces adding another division and air operations continuing, the supplied reporting points to an intensifying campaign rather than a contained incident. The casualty count from this day alone was already high, and the source makes clear that the ground and air offensives were continuing in parallel.
