• Israel continues to bombard southern Lebanon, killing at least 11 people in the worst attacks since a US-brokered ceasefire in June.\
• Israel says three soldiers were wounded in a drone attack in Lebanon overnight on Saturday.

Explosions in south Lebanon as Israeli forces continue air raids

Flames and smoke reported in the area between Ali al-Taher Heights and the Dabsha area in the Nabatieh district amid the sound of explosions.

Al Manar TV said the blasts were a result of Israeli air attacks in the area, while the Nabatieh Channel said the raids took place in the vicinity of the town of Kfar Reman.

The attacks follow the deadliest day of Israeli raids in Lebanon since a US-brokered ceasefire, with at least 11 people killed. Earlier, the Israeli military said three Israeli soldiers were wounded in a drone attack by Hezbollah.

Israeli official says latest strikes on Lebanon should ‘jumpstart’ talks

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel wants new and more ambitious talks with Lebanon, after Israeli forces carried out their deadliest strikes on the country since a US-brokered truce in June.

Doron Spielman told the AFP news agency that the strikes should “jumpstart” the talks, “not do the opposite”.

Lebanese authorities say 11 people were killed in the strikes on Saturday, including several children.

Israel said that it carried out the strikes after a Hezbollah attack that seriously wounded three of its soldiers, and claimed to be targeting a headquarters of the armed group. It acknowledged that family members of the targeted Hezbollah fighter were present at the time of the attack.

Spielman said Israel was still upholding the US-brokered framework agreement with Lebanon.

“We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we’re going to remove Hezbollah from the picture,” he told AFP.

The agreement calls for the Lebanese army to “restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament” of Hezbollah, after which Israeli forces would “progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory”.

Hezbollah has rejected the deal, with the group’s chief Naim Qassem saying it “grants Israel everything it wants, and the Lebanese authorities relinquish their sovereignty, leaving nothing for Lebanon”.

“We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we’re going to remove Hezbollah from the picture”

The Israelis are not believing in the existing agreement because the spokesperson is saying that his government wants "new and more ambitious  talks."

Developments added to our summaries on Lebanon report about obstructing the Lebanese army, attacking members of the army, infiltration in a village that was handed over to the Lebanese army.

The Israelis also have always stated that they will not leave the country. Colonists have been reported two times for entering Lebanon. Air strikes, artillery shelling and drone attacks have not stopped since the signing of the framework.

US-brokered truce allows Israel to attack Lebanon ‘without any consequences’

Ziad Abu Rish, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College, says most observers believe Netanyahu wants to escalate strikes on Lebanon “to demonstrate an undeterred resolve” to occupy the country’s south and to “pummel” Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians.

He said that Saturday’s attack, which killed 11, “follows a pattern that has been in place since the so-called ceasefire”, in which Israel is “allowed by the US” to attack Hezbollah and civilians in Lebanon “without any consequences”.

Abu Rish said the ceasefire has been “in name only” and held only between June 19 and 23, when Iran pushed for an end to Israeli attacks on Lebanon as part of its MoU with the US.

He said the deal offered to Lebanon’s government in the separate US-brokered talks with Israel involved Israel limiting its strikes and occupation to the south and Bekaa Valley in exchange for sparing the capital, Beirut.

As a result, “the population of southern Lebanon has continued to live under Israeli occupation, under Israeli strikes, and we should note that the majority of destruction of civilian infrastructure in southern Lebanon has occurred in areas Israel has controlled during the ceasefire”, Abu Rish said. “That includes homes, hospitals, schools, forts and agricultural lands.”

Israel’s policy in Lebanon ‘has been to collectively punish the Lebanese population’

Ziad Abu Rish, the Middle Eastern studies professor at Bard College.

He noted that Israeli forces have killed more than 4,300 people in Lebanon since March 2 and wounded more than 12,000. Some 90,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed, while some 600,000 people remain displaced.

“People’s lives have been broken,” Abu Rish said. “And it is clear that the Israeli policy has been to collectively punish the Lebanese population, and in particular Shia majority parts of Lebanon and south Lebanon, as it wages a campaign not just against Hezbollah but against the Lebanese people.”

The professor said Israel’s actions in Lebanon should be put in the context of what is happening in Gaza.

“We saw that Israel was able to continue its genocide in Gaza with no consequences,” he said. “So people should really not be surprised to see that it is really able to carry out a campaign of effectively depopulating and making south Lebanon uninhabitable, as has been documented by numerous journalists and human rights organisations,” he added.

The view ignores the root of the Israeli invasion as that is what the Lebanese people paying the brunt:

If there were no Netanyahu, obsessed with Iran for more than 30 years, who called on the US on June 16, 2025, for help in the assassination of Khamenei, knowing that Hezbollah would respond, there wouldn't be an Iranian leader assassinated triggering the spillover of his resumption of the 12-day war on Iran from that year.

There were the far-rightists, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who took the opportunity to bring the idea of a "Greater Israel," which is the "Israeli policy," into Lebanon after the Israeli invaders began to occupy Southern Lebanon. It encouraged Israeli colonists twice to cross the border into Lebanon.

Arab League condemns Israel’s latest strikes on Lebanon

The Arab League has condemned Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon, calling the attacks that killed 11 on Saturday “a dangerous escalation that threatens to derail any efforts aimed at resolving the ongoing conflict”.

Israel’s policies and practices, he added, “blatantly expose the occupation’s intentions to prolong the confrontations, obstruct negotiations, and impose a new reality on the ground that is completely unacceptable and rejected”.

The spokesman also warned that the conflict could spread unless the international community, and Washington in particular, stops Israel’s “war machine” and compels it to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

The resolution, adopted in 2006, calls for a full cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, with the immediate end of all attacks by Hezbollah and of all offensive military operations by Israel.

The governments of Lebanon and Iran had also condemned Saturday’s strikes earlier.

US says Hezbollah bears responsibility for Israeli presence in Lebanon

A spokesperson for the US State Department says that Hezbollah bears responsibility for the Israeli presence on Lebanese territory.

The official described Hezbollah as the main obstacle to Lebanon’s economic recovery and said the “pilot zone” program – under which Israeli forces withdraw from certain areas and Lebanese soldiers move in – remains the only viable path to peace.

The statement came after Israeli forces killed 11 people in southern Lebanon in the deadliest attacks since the US-brokered framework agreement between the two countries in June.

See previous comment.

Israel claims it killed senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon

The Israeli military says it has killed Abu Hassan Alaa, whom it described as a senior commander in Hezbollah’s “Badder Unit”, in southern Lebanon.

In a post on X, the military accused Alaa of helping to advance attacks against Israeli soldiers, including the launch of explosive drones targeting troops in southern Lebanon.

It said Alaa was killed in response to what it described as Hezbollah’s actions against Israeli soldiers in the “Security Zone”.

Hours earlier, Israel had claimed to have killed Hezbollah commander Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan in a strike on the southern village of Ansar. At least seven people, including two women and three children, were killed in that strike.

Israel’s Katz threatens further strikes amid escalation in Lebanon

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has threatened further attacks as the conflict intensifies in Lebanon.

“No account in any arena will remain open. We will strike with full force at those who harm our soldiers and our citizens,” Katz said in a post on X.

His comments came amid an escalation of Israeli attacks against what Israel said were Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. At least 11 people were killed and 19 wounded in Israeli attacks there on Saturday, including women and children, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

Lebanese officials ‘have lost all leverage’ after putting ‘all their eggs in the US-Israeli basket’

The Lebanese government has been left at the “mercy” of the US and Israel after signing on to the Washington-brokered framework agreement, argues Ziad Abu Rish, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College in the US state of New York.

He noted that Zawthar al-Gharbiya remains the only village Israeli forces have withdrawn from under the framework agreement and Israel has since publicly declared it is no longer interested in creating additional withdrawal zones.

The initial “pilot zones”, Abu Rish argued, were established as part of what “we could call the momentum of Lebanese-Israeli-US negotiations to undermine the US-Iran memorandum of understanding and its Lebanon clause”. But Israel’s refusal to withdraw further caused negotiations with Lebanon to “end rather abruptly” in Rome this month.

Abu Rish went on to describe the agreement as “an attempt by a few personalities in the Lebanese government” – specifically President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji – to “align with the Israeli and US” position on Lebanon and “to portray Hezbollah as the problem”.

In doing so, “they have put all their eggs in the US-Israeli basket,” he said, and “have lost any leverage they have”.

“They are now at the mercy of the United States and Israel,” he said. “And what we’ve seen in Gaza, what we’ve seen in Syria and now what we’re seeing in Lebanon is that the United States has absolutely no interest in pressuring Israel to take corrective action for its belligerent invasion and occupation of Lebanese and other territories.”

Lebanon’s Ali al-Taher

Located near southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh district and north of the Litani River, the Ali al-Taher ridge has become a major flashpoint since hostilities resumed between Hezbollah and Israel on March 2.

Both sides see the ridge as significant, as its elevation allows whoever controls it to observe and potentially influence movement in the surrounding Nabatieh-Litani area. It also forms part of the same strategic high-ground system as Beaufort Castle, allowing the two positions to provide complementary surveillance and fire coverage.

Israel previously maintained positions there during its occupation of southern Lebanon before withdrawing in 2000. Hezbollah subsequently incorporated the area into its defensive infrastructure.

Israeli forces are hoping to control the ridge once more, alongside Beaufort Castle and its surrounding area, which Israel seized in May. Israel, which claims the ridge conceals a Hezbollah command centre and underground weapons facilities, wants the Lebanese army to secure the site and dismantle the group’s infrastructure as one of several “pilot zones”.

However, Lebanon and Hezbollah view continued Israeli presence there as a violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a key obstacle to an Israeli withdrawal from the country’s south.

‘Heavy-handed’ Israelis ‘using every opportunity to retaliate’ in southern Lebanon

The Israeli army is continuing to launch strikes across southern Lebanon despite a ceasefire, says Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst.

“The Israelis are using every opportunity to retaliate very heavy-handed,” Pusztai said.

Basically, every time there is a Hezbollah attack, the Israeli military launches retaliatory strikes at two kinds of targets: Hezbollah targets, especially in the Nabatieh area, and civilian ones, the analyst said.

Some of the civilian sites are hit by accident, but others are deliberate targets, Pusztai said, adding as an example that “an Austrian UN observer was killed along with his three colleagues about 20 years ago, also in southern Lebanon, in an attack that was probably intentional”.

“I don’t think that the MoU has already collapsed for a good reason,” the analyst said.

“It is in the long-term interest of the Israelis that the government of Lebanon takes over control over southern Lebanon. They would prefer to have the Lebanese army controlling the territory on the northern borders of Israel far more than having Hezbollah in there.”

Death toll in Lebanon since Israeli invasion

At least 4,346 people have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded in Lebanon since Israel’s invasion of the south on March 2, according to an update by the country’s Health Ministry.

Among the dead are 393 women and 257 children. At least 135 medical workers have also been killed.

Israeli strikes on the towns of Deir ez-Zahrani and Ansar on Saturday resulted in 11 deaths, among them children.

Israeli military attacks high ground in southern Lebanon

The Israeli military has dropped explosives on Ali al-Taher Hill in southern Lebanon, according to the National News Agency.

The strategically important high ground on the outskirts of Nabatieh al-Fawqa has seen intense Israeli military action.

On Saturday, Israeli forces said “Hezbollah infrastructure” was struck in the Nabatieh and Ansar areas, saying that was in response to action against Israeli soldiers on the ridge.

At least 11 people, including children, were killed in the attacks and 19 injured.