The UN condemns the Israeli attack that killed children who were allegedly playing outside their homes in southern Lebanon.
Israeli air strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least five Syrians, including three children, Lebanese media reported, as the Israeli military 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 “which targeted agricultural land in the village of Umm Toot”, while two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike in Kfar Tebnit road, which is also in southern Lebanon.
The United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) condemned the deadly attacks.
“The death of three more children by an airstrike today as they played in front of their home in southern Lebanon is horrific,” the agency said in a post on X.
He added that “more children will be at risk as long as the violence continues.”
The AFP news agency, citing a Lebanese security source, reported that the other two Syrians killed on Tuesday were “civilians” who worked in the area and swam there.
The NNA said that “eyewitnesses reported that the motorcycle was carrying two people and that when several citizens tried to approach the motorcycle… it was the target of a second attack”.
The deaths 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 will 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.
Armed Conflict Location Project Data and Event Data (ACLED), show that Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon have carried out at least 7,400 cross-border attacks since the start of the war in Gaza in October last year.
Israel conducted about 83 percent of these attacks, totaling 6,142 incidents and killing at least 543 people in Lebanon. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks that killed at least 21 Israelis.
Israel’s military said on Tuesday that its air force launched strikes in parts of southern Lebanon after detecting more than 50 projectiles coming from the neighboring country. The military said it had attacked Hezbollah sites, including a “terrorist cell” in the Yarin area, which is near Umm Toot.
The Lebanese armed group later issued a statement saying it launched rounds of “Katyusha rockets” into northern Israel in response.
The group, in separate statements, cited both “the death of two civilians” in Kfar Tebnit and “the horrific massacre in the village of Umm Toot” as reasons for retaliatory fire.
The violence, largely restricted to the border area, raised fears of an all-out conflict between the enemies, who last went to war in the summer of 2006.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
