Lebanon’s health ministry says an Israeli strike in the south of the country killed 11 people on May 23, 2026, including six women and a child, despite a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
According to AFP’s report carried by Dawn, the ministry said the strike on the town of Sir al-Gharbiyeh in Nabatieh district also wounded nine people, including four children and a woman. The wording is significant because it frames the event as a mass-casualty attack in a civilian area, not a narrowly targeted battlefield strike.
The report does not say who among the dead was the intended target, if anyone, and it does not provide an Israeli military explanation in the excerpt. That omission means the only safe conclusion is that Lebanese officials have publicly reported a deadly strike and a high civilian toll.
The strike occurred against a backdrop of continuing tension despite the ceasefire. The packet says Israel has continued to strike widely in southern Lebanon and has issued frequent evacuation warnings to towns and villages across the south. It also notes that Israeli ground forces remain in territory near the border and that attacks since the start of the war have killed more than 2,900 people in Lebanon, including more than 400 since the truce began on April 17, according to Lebanese authorities.
The violence was not limited to Sir al-Gharbiyeh. The AFP report says Lebanon’s health ministry listed additional deaths in Tayr Felsay and Tayr Debba, and that the state news agency reported an Israeli missile strike around midnight on an apartment on the outskirts of Baalbek that killed Islamic Jihad commander Wael Abdel Halim and his 17-year-old daughter. Those details show that the day’s violence extended across multiple parts of the country.
At the political level, the strikes also landed while Israel and Lebanon were holding a third round of negotiations in Washington and had agreed to extend the ceasefire. Hezbollah condemned the talks, calling them a “dead end,” while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was holding territory, clearing territory and fighting an enemy that was trying to outsmart it.
The packet therefore presents a sharply conflicting picture: diplomacy on one track, renewed killings on another. For Lebanese officials, the latest strike again underlines the human cost of a ceasefire that has not stopped the air campaign. For readers, the essential fact is the toll: 11 dead, including women and a child, and nine wounded in the latest reported strike in southern Lebanon.
