Israeli strikes<\/a>\u00a0killed at least five people including a journalist.<\/p>\n“The Meeting went very well! The United States is going to work with\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Trump added that he looked forward to hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the near future.<\/p>\n
The ceasefire, reached after talks between the two nations’ ambassadors to Washington last week and set to expire on Sunday, has yielded a significant reduction in violence. Attacks have continued in southern\u00a0Lebanon, however, where Israeli troops have seized a self-declared buffer zone.<\/p>\n
Iran-backed Hezbollah says it has “the right to resist” occupying forces.<\/p>\n
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and U.S. Ambassador to\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0Michel Issa also attended the meeting.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military said on Thursday that it killed two armed individuals in southern\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0after identifying them approaching soldiers and posing what it described as an immediate threat.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear whether the incident was related to strikes reported earlier in nearby areas by\u00a0Lebanon’s health ministry, which said an Israeli air strike had killed three people and artillery shelling wounded two others, including a child.<\/p>\n
Wednesday was\u00a0Lebanon’s deadliest day since the ceasefire took effect on April 16.<\/p>\n
Those killed by Israeli strikes included Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, according to a senior Lebanese military official and her employer, Al-Akhbar newspaper.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said the group wanted the ceasefire to continue but “on the basis of full compliance by the Israeli enemy”. At a televised press conference, he reiterated Hezbollah’s objections to the face-to-face talks and urged the government to cancel all forms of direct contact with Israel.<\/p>\n
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the group opened fire in support of Iran in\u00a0the regional war. The ceasefire in\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0emerged separately from Washington\u2019s efforts to\u00a0resolve its conflict\u00a0with Tehran, though\u00a0Iran\u00a0had called for\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0to be included in any broader truce.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah said it carried out four operations in south\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0on Wednesday in response to Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n
Nearly 2,500 people have been killed in\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0since Israel went on the offensive following Hezbollah’s March 2 attack, according to Lebanese authorities.<\/p>\n
Israel is occupying a belt of the south that extends 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) into\u00a0Lebanon, saying it aims to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which has fired hundreds of rockets during the war.<\/p>\n
Israel’s military reiterated a warning to residents of south\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0not to cross into the area.<\/p>\n
Fadlallah said full compliance with the ceasefire meant Israel must “halt assassinations, completely cease fire … halt the destruction of villages,” followed by paving the way for an Israeli withdrawal through “procedures undertaken by the Lebanese state but not via direct negotiations.”<\/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\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0would push for an Israeli withdrawal, the return of Lebanese detained in Israel and a delineation of the land border.<\/p>\n
Israel says its objectives in the talks with\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0include securing the dismantlement of Hezbollah and creating conditions for a peace deal. Israel has sought to make common cause with\u00a0Lebanon’s government over Hezbollah, which Beirut has been seeking to disarm peacefully for the past year.<\/p>\n
Rubio hosted the first meeting between Leiter and Moawad on April 14 – the highest-level contact between\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0and Israel in decades.<\/p>\n
Washington has denied any link between its\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0mediation and diplomacy over the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Hezbollah says the\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0ceasefire was the result of Iranian pressure rather than U.S. mediation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\/BEIRUT\/JERUSALEM (Reuters) —\u00a0The ceasefire between\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0and Israel was extended for three weeks after a high-level meeting at the White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3065,28275,37,17993,10401,16240],"class_list":{"0":"post-80764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-ceasefire","9":"tag-extended","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-lebanon-israel","12":"tag-three","13":"tag-weeks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116456447228407756","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}