At least four people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon yesterday, Lebanon\u2019s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed group and Israel.<\/p>\n
On the eve of talks in Washington between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors, Lebanese president Joseph Aoun said Beirut would seek an extension of the 10-day, US-mediated ceasefire, which is set to expire on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the Lebanese group opened fire in support of Iran.<\/p>\n
The ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington\u2019s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce.<\/p>\n
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched an offensive in response to Hezbollah\u2019s March 2 attack, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel has seized a belt of territory at the southern border, where its troops remain, saying it aims to create a buffer zone to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the conflict.<\/p>\n
Lebanon\u2019s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said an Israeli strike hit a car in the south-Lebanon village of Tayri yesterday, killing two people inside.<\/p>\n
A senior Lebanese military official said an Israeli drone dropped a grenade on rescuers trying to lift a wounded journalist from rubble in Tayri. The Lebanese army asked the Israeli military, through a US-led mechanism, to allow rescuers to retrieve the wounded journalist, the official said.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said it was not preventing rescue teams from reaching the area, adding that it had struck one of two vehicles that had departed \u201cfrom a military structure used by Hezbollah\u201d and approached troops in \u201ca manner that posed an immediate threat to their safety\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said the people in the vehicles had crossed Israel\u2019s \u201cforward defence line\u201d \u2013 its line of deployment in the south \u2013 and accused them of violating the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cReports were received that two journalists were injured as a result of the strikes,\u201d the military said, adding that the details of the incident were under review.<\/p>\n
An Israeli airstrike in the southern town of Yohmor killed another two people, NNA and Lebanon\u2019s health ministry said.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah said it attacked an Israeli artillery position in southern Lebanon with a drone in response to what it said was an Israeli ceasefire violation.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said it had intercepted \u201ca hostile aircraft\u201d launched by Hezbollah towards Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah attacks killed two civilians in Israel and 15 Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon since March 2, Israel says.<\/p>\n
Mr Aoun said Beirut\u2019s envoy to today\u2019s talks, Lebanese ambassador to Washington Nada Moawad, would seek a ceasefire extension and a halt to demolitions being carried out by Israel in villages in the south.<\/p>\n
A Lebanese official said Beirut wants a ceasefire extension as a prerequisite for talks to expand beyond the ambassadorial level to the next phase, in which Lebanon would push for Israeli withdrawal, the return of Lebanese people detained in Israel and a delineation of the land border.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah, which says the Lebanon ceasefire was the fruit of Iranian pressure, has condemned Beirut for seeking talks with Israel, reflecting wider splits with the government that has sought Hezbollah\u2019s peaceful disarmament for a year.<\/p>\n
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa\u2019ar, in a speech, said Israel had taken a \u201chistoric decision to negotiate directly with Lebanon after more than 40 years\u201d. He referred to Lebanon as a \u201cfailed state\u201d, and called on its government to \u201cwork together against the terror state that Hezbollah built in your territory\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a speech on Friday, Mr Aoun said a ceasefire should be transformed into \u201cpermanent agreements that preserve the rights of our people, the unity of our land and the sovereignty of our nation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lebanon and Israel have remained in an official state of war since the establishment of Israel in 1948.<\/p>\n
Lebanon\u2019s most senior Shia official, Nabih Berri, speaker of the parliament, is against face-to-face negotiations with Israel, saying Beirut could have negotiated indirectly.<\/p>\n
Lebanon\u2019s leading Druze politician, Walid Jumblatt, said on Tuesday that the most Lebanon could offer is an update to a 1949 armistice agreement with Israel.<\/p>\n
US secretary of state Marco Rubio is set to attend today\u2019s meeting. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Maya Gebeily and Pesha Magid\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least four people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon yesterday, Lebanon\u2019s state news agency reported,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,23,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-450936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latest-news-ticker","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116457579919243715","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}