TYRE, Lebanon (AP) — Israel carried out several airstrikes Friday on southern Lebanon that killed at least 10 people, while the militant Hezbollah group said it fired rockets and drones at northern Israel where two soldiers were wounded.
Israel’s military and Hezbollah kept up their attacks despite in place since April 17.
Israel’s military on Friday afternoon urged residents of the Lebanese village of Habboush near the southern city of Nabatiyeh to evacuate, warning that those close to Hezbollah’s facilities would be in danger. An airstrike on Habboush that occurred around the time of the warning killed six people, including a woman and a child, and wounded eight, the Health Ministry said.
The state-run ɫtv News Agency reported that four people were killed in strikes on three other southern villages.
By Friday afternoon, had issued six statements saying it launched drones and rockets at Israeli military positions.
The Israeli military confirmed that Hezbollah launched an explosive drone that fell in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon. Israeli media reported that a drone strike near Margaliot in northern Israel caused a fire, and that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a separate Hezbollah drone impact in the area.
Friday’s exchanges came after paramedics in southern Lebanon recovered the bodies of five people, including a man and his three sons, from under rubble in the village of Kfar Rumman, also near Nabatiyeh, a day after they were killed.
ɫtv News Agency reported that the five were killed in an airstrike late Thursday on Kfar Rumman. The agency identified those whose bodies were recovered as Malek Hamza and his sons, Ali, Fadel and Hamza. It said the strike also killed a Lebanese soldier. The Lebanese army confirmed that a soldier, Ali Jaber, was killed in the strike.
Damaged homes and overburdened hospitals
Despite the war, residents have continued to return to homes in southern Lebanon after being displaced for weeks because of the hostilities.
One of them was Umm Ali Khodor, whose apartment in the southern port city of Tyre was damaged during the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024 and again in the current conflict.
“We were displaced, we rented a house, but as you know the situation is very difficult,” the woman said. “We could not continue so we returned to our home.”
At Jabal Aamel hospital in Tyre, one of the few in the area that are still functioning, director Wael Mroueh said many of the wounded they are treating are people who initially fled but decided to return and take their chances in areas facing periodic bombardment.
The dynamic was “different from all the previous wars,” he said. Many residents left the villages surrounding Tyre in the early days of the war, "but a large number did not find places and came back.”
Many of the hospital’s staff are also displaced, and the medical facility is hosting them and their families to ensure that it can continue to operate. The hospital has enough food and supplies to last for a month, Mroueh said, and is relying on international organizations to maintain its supply chain.
Official condemns targeting of Red Cross
Also Friday, a senior official with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies condemned the targeting of Red Cross volunteers during the Israel-Hezbollah war.
IFRC Under Secretary General for ɫtv Society Development and Coordination Xavier Castellanos Mosquera, who was visiting Lebanon, said that two Lebanese Red Cross volunteers have been killed and 18 others wounded by Israeli strikes. More than 100 in total have been killed in Lebanon during the war, according to the country’s health ministry.
Mosquera told The Associate Press that Red Cross volunteers in southern Lebanon have described hugging each other before departing on a call “because they don’t know if they will return.”
He added that he had seen video showing “ambulances that were hit by bullets” while trying to rescue journalist Amal Khalil, who was buried in rubble when an Israeli strike hit a building where she was sheltering in southern Lebanon last month. Her body was pulled from the rubble hours later when rescuers were able to reach the scene.
The IFRC official also recently visited Iran, where he said key facilities of the Iranian Red Crescent Society had been targeted. Two chemical plants that had been their main providers of raw materials to produce plastic syringes and dialysis components were struck and destroyed. Another strike hit close to a Red Crescent rehabilitation center in Tehran that served children, elderly people and people with disabilities, causing damage.
Israel has denied that it deliberately targets health facilities and emergency workers.
The latest war between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched a war on its main backer, Iran. Israel has since carried out hundreds of airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, capturing dozens of towns and villages along the border.
Since then Lebanon and Israel have held their in more than three decades. The two countries have formally been in a state of war since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.
A declared in Washington went into effect on April 17. The ceasefire was later extended by three weeks.
The Health Ministry said Friday that the war’s death toll reached 2,618 while 8,094 were wounded.
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Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalist Koral Said in Abu Snan, Israel, and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
