Israel struck several border posts between Lebanon and Syria last year, like the Arida border crossing shown above on 27 November [Ibrahim Chalhoub/AFPP via Getty]
Israel carried out several airstrikes Thursday night on villages in Lebanon close to the Syria border with at least two people confirmed killed.
An air raid on the tiny east Lebanon border village of Janta killed two and wounded 10 others, the Lebanese health ministry said.
The airstrike allegedly targeted a military site that includes underground infrastructure used to develop and produce weapons, in addition to military infrastructure on the Syrian-Lebanese border, which the Israeli army claimed was being used to smuggle arms.
Janta was also targeted in late December when Israel claimed it struck militant infrastructure along the border with Syria.
In the northern Lebanon Akkar district, where attacks are rare, an Israeli airstrike targeted a truck in the Wadi Khaled border region, but no casualties were reported.
Other airstrikes were reported on illegal crossings between Lebanon and Syria too, with no further details.
Despite the US-brokered ceasefire between the two countries, Israel has continued to conduct airstrikes in southern Lebanon and along the country’s porous border with Syria, claiming it was foiling any attempts for Hezbollah to receive weapons or regroup after the war.
Hezbollah has come out severely weakened from the recent conflict with Israel, which started as cross-border clashes in October 2023 and spiralled into a full-blown war in September, before the 27 November ceasefire deal.
That agreement has been extended to 18 February, after Israel refused to withdraw from parts of southern Lebanon it still occupies by the initial 26 January deadline, claiming Beirut was not implementing the deal fast enough by deploying Lebanese soldiers to the south.
The Iran-backed Shia militant Hezbollah group received another heavy blow when its supply route in Syria was cut off after the Assad regime was toppled in early December by Syrian rebels. Hezbollah had long relied on Iran to dispatch weapons to Lebanon via Iraq and Syria.
Separately, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun welcomed Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel-Ati on Friday, who handed Aoun a formal invitation to visit Cairo.
“The Egyptian stance is firm regarding stopping all [Israeli] violations and breaches and a complete Israeli withdrawal from all Lebanese territories, and our contacts are continuing with the French, American, and Israeli sides to achieve this,” Abdel-Ati told a press conference at the Baabda Presidential Palace, referring to a multinational committee supervising the ceasefire’s implementation.
Abdel-Ati also voiced his country’s readiness to take part in reconstruction efforts in Lebanon; swathes of the country’s south, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and towns and villages across the east were destroyed by Israel, with damages estimated in the billions of dollars.
