Israel strikes Lebanon day after security deal

Israel struck southern Lebanon on Saturday, a day after the two countries signed a US-brokered security arrangement aimed at easing tensions along their border after months of hostilities.

Lebanon’s state news agency said an Israeli drone struck in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, which lies outside a security zone shown on a map published by Israel of an expanded zone its troops control in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli military said it had carried out the strike using a drone as no Israeli troops were in the immediate area. It said it targeted an individual who posed a threat to its forces, without providing further details or evidence.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement signed in Washington was “null”, a “humiliation” and a surrender of sovereignty, and should be replaced by the Iran-US memorandum. Qassem added that any attempt to link Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the group’s disarmament crossed “red lines”.

More than a million Lebanese individuals have been driven from their homes by a conflict that has run parallel to the wider Iran war. Hezbollah and Iran say Washington pledged to end hostilities in Lebanon as part of its memorandum of understanding signed two weeks ago to end the wider war.

The framework agreed on Friday provides for a phased Israeli withdrawal from some parts of southern Lebanon, alongside the deployment of the Lebanese army. But Israeli forces would be permitted to remain in an expanded security zone for the time being, pending further implementation. Qassem added: “We did not leave the battlefield in the most difficult circumstances, and we will not leave it.” He said the Iran-US memorandum of understanding reached earlier this month, which guarantees Lebanon’s territorial integrity, should serve as the basis for ending the conflict, rather than Friday’s Washington agreement.