The Lebanese army said three Lebanese soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on 17 March, after the IDF launched fresh raids and ordered residents of large areas of southern Lebanon to evacuate.
The Israeli army insists its operations are not “against the Lebanese army” and said at least one such operation was “under review”.
The Lebanese army has tried to stay out of the war, but three more of its soldiers were also killed in Israeli shelling earlier this month. It happened during an Israeli command operation in eastern Lebanon.
“Hezbollah on 17 March announced a series of attacks on Israeli troops near the border in southern Lebanon.
In Geneva, the UN Human Rights Office said on 17 March that threats by Israeli officials “to inflict the same level of destruction on Lebanon as in Gaza are totally unacceptable”.
In the southern city of Sidon, far from the border, displaced people from southern Lebanon slept in their cars parked along the seafront, AFP’s Team AFP reported.
“The city is overcrowded, we have no more space,” said Jihan Qaisi, director of a non-governmental organisation that runs a school converted into a shelter that already houses more than 1,100 people.
“Many people come every day to seek shelter, but we have no more space, we can’t take them in,” she continued, adding that the road from the south was closed on Monday, 16 March, as people fled north following evacuation warnings.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on 2 March when the pro-Iranian group Hezbollah (recognised as a terrorist group in the US and Israel) launched rockets into Israel in response to US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel responded with heavy airstrikes in several parts of Lebanon and ground operations in the south.
Lebanon claims three soldiers killed in Israeli shelling