At least 10 dead in Israeli attack in southern Lebanon – one of the deadliest incidents since October 7

CNN
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At least ten people were killed in an Israeli attack in Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said. Hezbollah then launched a rocket attack on Israel.

All those killed in Lebanon were Syrian citizens. According to the ministry, a woman and her two children were also among the dead.

At least five people were also injured in the attack. They include three Syrians, one Sudanese and one Lebanese, the ministry said. Two of the Syrians are in critical condition and are undergoing surgery in a nearby hospital.

The Israeli military said it attacked a Hezbollah weapons depot in the Nabatiyeh area overnight.

The death toll from the attack is one of the highest in southern Lebanon since Israel began its war on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed around 1,200 people.

Mohamed, 14, was about to go to sleep when he saw a rocket hit a nearby warehouse. He told CNN that rescue workers worked through the night to remove bodies from the rubble and found a decapitated body and a severed arm.

Mohamed pointed to the sky, where the sound of an invisible drone was coming from, and said: “They fly here 24 hours a day, sometimes so low that you can see them.”

Haitham, a Syrian National Guardsman from a nearby company, said of the victims, all of whom are believed to be Syrian migrants, “They escaped one war and were killed in another.”

In response to the attack, Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon fired a salvo of rockets at Ayelet Hashahar in northern Israel, the group said in a statement.

The Israeli military confirmed that sirens sounded in Ayelet Hashahar after “approximately 55 missiles” flew in from Lebanon. “No injuries were reported,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

In another incident, the Israel Defense Forces said one of its soldiers was seriously injured and another was slightly injured when a missile fired from Lebanon hit Misgav Am.

Also on Saturday, a motorcycle was hit and killed by a drone in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, the Lebanese state news agency NNA reported.

Since the beginning of the Israeli war against Gaza, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians were killed in ten months, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been engaged in almost daily cross-border shelling.

Tensions between Lebanon and Israel escalated further late last month when an Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital Beirut killed Hezbollah's top military commander, Fu'ad Shukr. Israel is widely believed to have assassinated Hamas' political leader in Tehran, Iran, the next day. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the incident.

This has sparked speculation about impending retaliatory strikes against Israel by Hezbollah and Iran. Two sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN earlier this month that it was increasingly likely that Hezbollah would attack Israel, regardless of what Iran planned.

Given Lebanon's proximity to Israel, its direct neighbor to the north, Hezbollah could act at short notice or without notice, one of the sources said – which does not apply to Iran.

On the ground in Gaza, at least 15 members of the same family were killed in an Israeli attack in al-Zawayda, in the center of the enclave, a spokesman for the local civil defense said on Saturday. Nine children were among the dead.

A CNN video from the scene shows people searching through the rubble in the morning and pulling out the body of a child.

When asked by CNN for comment on the incident, the Israeli military said that “reports that civilians were injured as a result of the attack are currently being investigated.”

In a later statement released on Saturday, Israeli forces said they had killed several insurgents in central Gaza, including one who fired rockets at Israeli troops.

The fighting in the Gaza Strip left large parts of the area in ruins and almost the entire population had to be displaced.

Israel issued new evacuation orders for central Gaza on Saturday, the ninth in August alone. The UN warned that such orders significantly affect the local population's access to vital services and shelter.

Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike in the West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday killed two commanders of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing. The Qassam Brigades said the attack hit a vehicle in which the two men were traveling. The two men are believed to have planned and carried out several attacks, including a gun attack on August 11 in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank that killed a 23-year-old man. Earlier on Saturday, the Israeli army confirmed the hit on the vehicle and identified the men killed as “terrorist Ahmed Abu Arrah from Aqabah” and “terrorist Raafat Dawasi from Silat al-Harithiya.”

Hostage-taking and ceasefire talks ended on Friday and are due to resume next week. International mediators presented a new proposal to resolve remaining differences between Israel and Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister's office said on Saturday that his negotiating team was still cautiously optimistic about achieving a ceasefire and a hostage-taking agreement.

“The team expressed cautious optimism to the Prime Minister about the possibility of moving forward with the agreement on the basis of the latest American proposal (which is based on the May 27 draft) – and which contains elements acceptable to Israel,” the office said in a statement.

“There is hope that the strong pressure from the United States and mediators on Hamas will lead to a weakening of its opposition to the American proposal and a breakthrough in the negotiations will be possible,” the statement said.