TYRE, Lebanon — Israeli jets launched an airstrike over a southern Lebanese border village Sunday, while troops shelled other border towns and villages still under Israeli control, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.
The attacks come days after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Israel continues to call on displaced Lebanese not to return to dozens of southern villages in this current stage of the ceasefire. It also continues to impose a daily curfew for people moving across the Litani River between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Lebanese military have been critical of Israeli strikes and overflights since the ceasefire went into effect, accusing Israel of violating the agreement. The military said it had filed complaints, but no clear military action has been taken by Hezbollah in response, meaning that the tense cessation of hostilities has not yet broken down.
When Israel has issued statements about these strikes, it says they were done to thwart possible Hezbollah attacks.
The U.S. military announced Friday that Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers and senior U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein will co-chair a new U.S.-led monitoring committee that includes France, Lebanon, Israel and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL. Hochstein led over a year of shuttle diplomacy to broker the ceasefire deal, and his role will be temporary until a permanent civilian co-chair is appointed.
Lebanon, meanwhile, is trying to pick up the pieces and return to some level of normal life after the war that decimated large swaths of its south and east, displacing an estimated 1.2 million people. The Lebanese military said it detonated unexploded munitions left over from Israeli strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon. Elsewhere, the Lebanese Civil Defense said it removed five bodies from under the rubble in two southern Lebanese towns over the past 24 hours.
The first phase of the ceasefire is a 60-day cessation of hostilities during which Hezbollah militants are supposed to withdraw from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River and Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. Lebanese troops are to deploy in large numbers in the south, effectively being the only armed force in control of the area alongside UNIFIL peacekeepers.
But challenges remain. Many families who want to bury their dead deep in southern Lebanon are unable to do so at this point.
The Lebanese Health Ministry and military allocated a plot of land in the coastal city of Tyre for those people to be temporarily laid to rest. Dr. Wissam Ghazal of the Health Ministry in Tyre said almost 200 bodies have been temporarily buried in that plot of land.
“Until now, we haven’t been able to go to our village, and our hearts are burning because our martyrs are buried in this manner,” said Om Ali, whose husband was a combatant killed in the war from the border town of Aita el-Shaab, just a stone’s throw from the border.
