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A top Lebanese official who has developed close ties to President Trump has called on the US to step in and stop Israeli airstrikes in the country.
Getting into it: The call was made by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who said Sunday’s strikes across south Lebanon were “a dangerous escalation… reaching Lebanese state institutions” and health facilities. He called on the international community and particularly the US, which brokered direct Israel-Lebanon talks and a framework agreement in June, “to urgently act to stop these violations.”
The newest round of strikes killed at least seven people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Two people were killed in Nabatieh al-Fawqa and two women died in Arab Salim, just up the road, with about 20 others wounded across those areas, Nabatieh city and Kfar Rumman. The ministry later tied three more deaths to a strike that hit a parking lot outside Nabatieh. It also said one of the strikes in Nabatieh al-Fawqa leveled the Ghandour hospital, which had been sitting empty, calling it “another grave violation of international humanitarian law.”
Israel said the strikes answered a Hezbollah drone attack the day before. “Terrorists from the Hezbollah terrorist organization launched two drones towards IDF soldiers operating in the Security Zone in southern Lebanon,” the military said, reporting no Israeli casualties and calling it a “blatant violation.” The IDF said it hit Hezbollah operatives, weapons storage facilities and what it described as a command center the group ran out of a former hospital building. Hezbollah has not claimed an attack in weeks.
The strike pattern in Arab Salim drew particular attention. Israel issued an online evacuation warning for a building it called a Hezbollah facility, the first such warning in Lebanon since early August. According to Lebanon’s National News Agency, warplanes first hit a different house, destroying it and killing the two women, before striking the building named in the warning.
In Nabatieh city, a strike hit a historic building and tore up offices used by the finance and agriculture ministries. Mayor Abbas Fakhreddine said it was the second time the building had been hit. He called on the Lebanese government to “take action” immediately and “at the least defend its institutions.”
This all comes roughly six months after Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of Iran in March, pulling the country into the wider war. Beirut puts the death toll from the Israeli air campaign and ground invasion that followed at more than 4,300.






