Lebanon’s military said Thursday that an Israeli attack had killed three more of its soldiers in the southern part of the country, hours after a new wave of airstrikes hit residential areas near Beirut overnight.
The Lebanese military said the three soldiers had been killed near the town of Yater while on an operation to evacuate wounded people from the area.
Israel’s military said it was looking into whether its forces had “accidentally harmed” Lebanese soldiers while conducting raids in the area against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. It said in a statement that it “does not intentionally target soldiers of the Lebanese army,” and added: “The incident is under review and any lessons will be learned.”
Lebanon’s military is not a party to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed armed group whose military assets dwarf those of the country’s government.
But Lebanese troops have increasingly been caught in the crossfire: Thursday was at least the fourth time this month that this Israeli troops had killed Lebanese soldiers amid their fight against Hezbollah. This week, the Israeli military apologized over the deaths of three other Lebanese soldiers, saying that it was “not operating against the Lebanese army.”
As Israeli troops engage in a weekslong ground invasion of southern Lebanon, the Israeli military has kept up aerial bombardment across the country, in particular in the Dahiya, a densely populated urban area near Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway.
The Israeli military said Thursday that overnight strikes in the area had targeted “civilian buildings in the heart of populated areas” that Hezbollah had used to manufacture or store weapons, adding that it had issued evacuation orders for residents of the buildings.
The Lebanese television channel al-Mayadeen, which is broadly viewed as pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah, said that one of its offices was hit. Video broadcast by the channel showed the concrete shell of a building surrounded by shattered glass and twisted metal.
Al-Mayadeen said the Israeli military had not issued a warning before striking its offices, which the channel’s employees had vacated at the start of Israel’s invasion. There were no reports of injuries. It said in a statement that it “holds the Israeli occupation responsible for targeting a well-known media office belonging to a prominent news channel.”
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