Woman and her 2 children are among 10 killed in an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon     

Nabatieh (Lebanon), August 17

An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon early Saturday killed at least 10 Syrian nationals, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

The strike on Wadi al-Kfour in Nabatieh province is among the deadliest in Lebanon since the Hezbollah militant group and Israeli military started trading strikes on October 8, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel and sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Hezbollah maintains that it will stop its attacks once a cease-fire is reached in the Gaza Strip.

Among the dead were a woman and her two children, the ministry said. Five others were wounded, two of whom in critical condition.

An Arabic-language spokesperson for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, said the strike in the southern province targeted a weapons depot belonging to Hezbollah.

Mohammad Shoaib, who runs a slaughterhouse in Wadi al-Kfour, said the area struck was an “industrial and civilian area” that contained factories producing bricks, metal, and aluminium, as well as a dairy farm.

The uncle of three of the people killed in the strike said they were factory workers who were in their housing accommodation when they were hit. He denied that there were weapons at the facility.

“There was nothing at all like that,” Hussein Shahoud said. “There was metal for construction, for building, for all kinds of purposes.”

Hezbollah later announced it had fired a volley of rockets at the community of Ayelet HaShahar, near Safad in northern Israel in retaliation for the strike.

The statement said that all 10 victims in Lebanon were civilians. Hezbollah typically issues death notices when its members are killed.

The Israeli army said 55 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon, some of which fell in open areas. No injuries were reported, but the strikes ignited multiple fires, it said. Earlier Saturday, two Israeli soldiers were injured, one seriously, by a strike coming from Lebanon that hit the area of Misgav Am.

The Israeli military also said it had killed a Hezbollah commander Saturday in a separate strike in the area of the coastal city of Tyre. Lebanese state media reported that one person was killed in a strike on a motorcyclist near Tyre. Hezbollah did not immediately give any statement on the person’s identity.

The Lebanese government and international governments have scrambled for weeks to put an end to the months-long clashes, with the region on a knife edge since July.