An Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three other troops on Friday, Lebanon’s military said, an incident that entangles the country’s official army in the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
The Lebanese army said the Israeli airstrike hit a building near a military checkpoint in Kafra, Bint Jbeil province in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said it had been targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon when reports emerged that it had hit several Lebanese army soldiers. It said it investigated the incident but remained “unaware of any Lebanese army facilities found in the area of the strike”.
The attack on the Lebanese army comes just hours after Israeli troops fired on the headquarters of United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, injuring two peacekeepers for the second time in as many days.
Lebanon’s army has largely stayed on the sidelines of the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in hopes of preventing it from spiralling out of control. After Israeli troops launched their ground invasion in southern Lebanon, Lebanese troops withdrew some five kilometres from their observation posts along the border.
But as Israel escalates its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border, Lebanese troops have increasingly found themselves in the crossfire. An Israeli airstrike killed one Lebanese soldier and wounded another earlier this month.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as Unifil, said the explosions went off close to an observation tower at its headquarters in the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura.
One of the injured peacekeepers was taken to a hospital in the nearby city of Tyre, while the other was treated at the site. It did not specify the cause of the blasts.
It also said an Israeli army bulldozer hit the perimeter of another of its positions in southern Lebanon while Israeli tanks moved nearby. Additional peacekeepers were sent to reinforce the position, it said.
On Thursday, Unifil said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the southern town of Naqoura, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers, who were hospitalised.
Earlier on Friday, an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon killed a young man from Thailand in the north of Israel early.
The man died a day after Israeli strikes in Lebanon left dozens of people dead in Beirut and wounded two UN peacekeepers.
Magen David Adom, of the paramedic service, said that the 27-year-old was killed by a missile that hit agricultural land.
Israeli media reported that the man killed was a foreign worker on a kibbutz, a communal farm, in the north. Israel employs many foreign nationals, particularly from Thailand, on farms.
The Israeli military said that anti-tank fire from Lebanon injured two other civilians on Friday.
Hezbollah claimed one missile attack on a military position in the north on Friday morning.
Hezbollah and other militants in Lebanon have been exchanging fire with Israel for the past year.
Israel recently escalated bombardment in Lebanon and invaded a strip inside the Lebanese border, vowing to push out Hezbollah fighters.
Friday’s strike was one of the first civilian deaths in Israel since the escalation began in late September.
Two Israelis were killed by rocket debris on Wednesday.
On the Lebanese side, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,400 people in the past three weeks, including fighters, civilians and medical personnel.
At least 22 people were killed and 117 wounded in Israeli airstrikes that hit two areas in central Beirut, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities.
The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
A year ago, Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed into army bases and farming communities, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250.
They are still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, which began firing rockets at Israel on October 8 2023.
Elsewhere, Turkey has condemned Israel’s attack on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, characterising it as “a manifestation of its perception that its crimes go unpunished”.
“The international community is obliged to ensure that Israel abides by international law,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement released late on Thursday.
“We will continue to support all initiatives within the framework of international law to promote peace in the region.”
Turkey contributes to the Unifil maritime task force with a corvette and five personnel, the ministry said.
Speaking at the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Laos, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for an urgent political solution to the spreading Middle East conflict.
“The level of death and destruction in Gaza is something that has no comparison to any other situation that I have seen,” he said.
He also condemned attacks against two Indonesian peacekeepers who were injured by Israel fire, saying “peacekeepers must be protected by all parties of the conflicts”.
