Israel kills five in attacks on Lebanon after Trump announces de-escalation

The deadly attacks raise concerns about the reported agreement on the cessation of hostilities.

At least five people have been killed in Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon, Lebanese state media report, hours after United States President Donald Trump announced an agreement to de-escalate fighting that neither Israel nor the Lebanese group Hezbollah has publicly accepted.

The official National News Agency (NNA) said on Tuesday that two Syrians were killed in an Israeli attack on a plant nursery where they were working in the town of Jebchit in Nabatieh governorate.

Israeli drone strikes hit a motorcycle on Martyr Sabra Street in Toul and a car in the Dhi’at al-Arab neighbourhood of Ansar, killing two people, NNA said.

Separately, a drone attack killed the driver of a car in Nabatieh, NNA said.

The attacks came hours after Trump said he had held separate phone calls with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hezbollah leaders and announced that Israel and the Iran-aligned armed group had agreed to de-escalate attacks.

The office of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said under the agreement, Hezbollah would no longer fire into Israel while the Israeli military would cease striking the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The developments followed a dramatic escalation in violence that saw Israeli troops stage their deepest incursion into Lebanon in more than two decades, conducting waves of heavy bombardments and threatening to attack the Beirut suburbs as the situation threatened to scupper a ceasefire in the wider US-Israel war on Iran.

The Israeli military said air defences intercepted two projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel in the morning, hours after Trump’s announcement.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the reported attack on Israel has raised concerns about the situation.

“Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for any cross-border attacks since Trump’s announcement,” she said.

“However, it has claimed attacks against Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon,” our correspondent said, adding that the developments show “just how fragile this deal is”.

“Even though the military has taken more control and pushed deeper into Lebanon, the Israeli army has suffered casualties with at least two soldiers killed in the last 24 hours in the area of Beaufort Castle, a strategic hilltop position,” she said.

Khodr added: “Clearly, Hezbollah is still able to attack them.”

Israeli troops on Saturday seized the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle and the strategic ridge it sits on in southern Lebanon.

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