Israel launches airstrikes in Lebanon as deadline to disarm Hezbollah nears

Israel carried out a series of airstrikes on southern and northeastern Lebanon on Thursday as a deadline looms to disarm the militant Hezbollah group along the tense frontier. The strikes came a day before a meeting of the committee monitoring the enforcement of a US-brokered ceasefire that halted the latest war between Israel and Hezbollah a year ago.

It will be the second meeting of the mechanism after Israel and Lebanon appointed civilian members to a previously military-only committee. The group also includes the US, France and the UN peacekeeping force deployed along the border. In Paris, Lebanon’s army commander Gen Rodolph Haikal is scheduled to meet on Thursday with US, French and Saudi officials to discuss ways of assisting the army in its mission to boost its presence in the border area.

The Lebanese Government has said that the army should have cleared all the border area south of the Litani river from Hezbollah’s armed presence by the end of the year. The Israeli military said the strikes hit Hezbollah infrastructure sites and launching sites in a military compound used by the group to conduct training and courses for its fighters. The Israeli military added that it struck several Hezbollah military structures in which weapons were stored, and from which Hezbollah members operated recently.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the intense airstrikes stretched from areas in Mount Rihan in the south to the northeastern Hermel region that borders Syria. Shortly afterward, a drone strike on a car near the southern town of Taybeh inflicted casualties, NNA said. “This is an Israeli message to the Paris meeting aiming to support the Lebanese army,” Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said about the strikes. “The fire belt of Israeli airstrikes is to honour the mechanism’s meeting tomorrow,” Berri added during a parliament meeting in Beirut.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began October 8, 2023, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Israel launched a widespread bombardment of Lebanon in September last year that severely weakened Hezbollah, followed by a ground invasion. Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes since then, mainly targeting Hezbollah members but also killing 127 civilians, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Over the past weeks, the US has increased pressure on Lebanon to work harder on disarming Hezbollah.