The UN condemns the Israeli attack that killed children playing outside their homes in southern Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon have killed at least five Syrians, including three children, Lebanese media reported, as the Israeli army and the Hezbollah armed group continued to exchange fire across the border.
Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said on Tuesday that the three children were killed in an Israeli airstrike “that targeted agricultural lands in the village of Umm Toot,” while two others were killed in an Israeli drone attack on the road to Kfar Tebnit, which is also in southern Lebanon.
The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) condemned the deadly attacks.
“The deaths of three more children in an airstrike today while they were apparently playing outside their home in southern Lebanon is horrific,” the agency said in a message on X.
She added that “more children are at risk as long as the violence continues.”
The AFP news agency, citing a Lebanese security source, reported that the two other Syrians killed on Tuesday were “civilians” who worked in the area and bathed there.
The NNA said that “eyewitnesses reported that the motorcycle was carrying two people and when a number of citizens tried to approach the motorcycle… it was subjected to a second blow.”
The killings come as Israeli forces continue to exchange fire with Hezbollah, which has launched attacks against Israel in support of Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip.
The Lebanese armed group said it would cease hostilities as soon as Israeli authorities and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, agree on a ceasefire deal to end the brutal war that has killed at least 38,713 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,139 people in Israel.
Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project shows that Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon have carried out at least 7,400 attacks across the border since the start of the Gaza war in October last year.
Israel carried out about 83 percent of these attacks, or 6,142 incidents in total, and killed at least 543 people in Lebanon. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks that killed at least 21 Israelis.
The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that its air force had launched attacks on areas of southern Lebanon after detecting more than 50 projectiles from the neighboring country. The army said it had attacked Hezbollah sites, including a “terrorist cell” in the Yarin region, near Umm Toot.
The Lebanese armed group later issued a statement claiming to have launched a series of “Katyusha rockets” at northern Israel in response.
In separate statements, the group cited both “the death of two civilians” in Kfar Tebnit and “the horrific massacre in the village of Umm Toot” as reasons for the retaliatory fire.
The violence, largely limited to the border area, raises fears of a general conflict between the two enemies, whose last war dates back to the summer of 2006.