Deadly strikes by Israel in Lebanon

Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state media say Israeli forces have carried out several new drone and artillery strikes in southern Lebanon, killing a shepherd. The new Israeli strikes on Tuesday put further strain on a tenuous 6-day-old ceasefire with Hizbollah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed keep striking "with an iron fist” against perceived Hizbollah violations of the truce.

He spoke a day after Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes that killed nearly a dozen people in Lebanon. Those strikes came after the Lebanese group fired a volley of projectiles as a warning over what it said were previous Israeli ceasefire violations.

Hizbollah began launching rockets, drones and missiles into Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas fighters who are fighting in the Gaza Strip. The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

Israel’s blistering retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,502 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

The war in Gaza has destroyed vast areas of the coastal enclave and displaced 90% of the population of 2.3 million, often multiple times.

Associated Press