Lebanese President Joseph Aoun urged Washington and the international community to help stop Israeli attacks, which killed at least seven people on Sunday (September 6, 2026) despite a truce and a framework deal aimed at halting the violence.

Israel said it had targeted Hezbollah operatives and sites in response to a drone attack a day earlier by the Iran-backed group on its troops in the vicinity of a strategic south Lebanon ridge.

It reported no casualties but accused Hezbollah of a “blatant violation”.

Israel this week said it had captured the Nabatieh-area Ali al-Taher ridge, which it considers part of its self-declared “security zone” in south Lebanon.

Hezbollah, which has not claimed any attacks for weeks, has not commented on Israel’s declaration of control over the site.

Mr. Aoun said Sunday’s (September 6, 2026) strikes, which damaged government premises and destroyed an out-of-service hospital, were “a dangerous escalation… reaching Lebanese state institutions” and health facilities.

He called on the international community — particularly the United States, which has sponsored direct Israel-Lebanon talks and a framework agreement between the sides in June — “to urgently act to stop these violations”.

Lebanon’s health ministry said two people were killed in strikes on south Lebanon’s Nabatieh al-Fawqa, with two women also killed in nearby Arab Salim.

It said 20 other people, including several women and three children, were wounded there, as well as in the city of Nabatieh and town of Kfar Rumman.

The ministry later reported that a strike on a parking lot near Nabatieh killed three more people.

Hospital hit

The ministry said one of the strikes in Nabatieh al-Fawqa “totally destroyed” the out-of-service Ghandour hospital, decrying “another grave violation of international humanitarian law”.

Israel’s army said it targeted Hezbollah operatives and infrastructure, including “weapons storage facilities and terrorist structures”, as well as “a Hezbollah command centre that had been established inside a building previously used as a hospital”.

It had earlier issued its first evacuation notice in Lebanon in a month, warning residents near a building it called a Hezbollah facility in Arab Salim to leave ahead of an attack on the site.

It did not issue warnings for other areas where strikes were reported.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that after the Israeli warning for Arab Salim, “enemy warplanes launched a strike on another house, destroying it” and killing the two women.

It said the Israeli military subsequently carried out a strike on the building threatened in the evacuation warning.

At the scene of the second strike, an AFP correspondent saw the ruins of a devastated villa, with large decorative columns laying on their side next to stairs littered with rubble.

Haidar Haidar, the brother of the building’s owner, told AFP that nobody had been living inside.

At the other site in Arab Salim where the two women were killed, a mattress, furniture and other items, including a Hezbollah flag were strewn among the rubble, while neighbouring buildings were also damaged.

‘Take action’

The NNA also reported a strike on a motorcycle in the Nabatieh area and said that another in the city itself targeted a historical building and damaged offices belonging to finance and agriculture authorities.

An AFP correspondent there saw rubble and extensive damage to adjacent buildings, shops and vehicles, as heavy machinery cleared the road. Dust and debris covered chairs and desks in the regional ministry offices.

Nabatieh Mayor Abbas Fakhreddine said “the Lebanese government must take action… and at the least defend its institutions”, adding that it was the second time the official buildings had been damaged by strikes.

Lebanon was drawn into the wider West Asia war in March after Hezbollah attacked Israel in support of its backer Iran.

Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion of Lebanon that Beirut says have killed more than 4,300 people.

Violence has decreased since a U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding on the broader regional conflict in June and the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement later that month.

Israeli forces are operating inside a self-declared “security zone” around 10 kilometres (six miles) deep inside Lebanon along the border.

Published – September 06, 2026 11:19 pm IST

Mohamed Ashek, 13, carries a toolbox as he walks amid the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike after returning home following displacement during the war, after the Israel-Lebanon deal, in Tyre, southern Lebanon, on July 5, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem, is seen on a screen during a sermon marking the first day of Ashoura, the Shiite Muslim commemoration of the 7th-century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the grave of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, left, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, June 17, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP

Smoke billows following Israeli strikes, in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, on May 19, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Over the years, Hezbollah has built sprawling social, political and military networks with deep roots in Lebanon’s Shia community. 
| Photo Credit: AP

Plumes of smoke rise following Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, after an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, as seen from Baabda on March 13, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An Israeli strike on the village of Kfar Hatta, in southern Lebanon on January 5, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Smoke billows over Beirut southern suburbs after a strike, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon October 8, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli forces have killed the would-be successors of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, without naming them.

“We have degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message.

Mr. Netanyahu did not identify by name Nasrallah’s replacement that he claimed Israel had killed.

A Hezbollah official said on Sunday that Israel was obstructing search and rescue efforts in an area where Nasrallah’s potential successor Hashem Safieddine is thought to have been when Israel bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday.

Israel killed Nasrallah in a September air strike on Beirut.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Nasrallah’s replacement had probably been “eliminated”.

It was not immediately clear who Netanyahu meant in his comments by the “replacement of the replacement”.

“Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years,” Mr. Netanyahu said in his video message, which was directed at the people of Lebanon.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel last Oct. 8, a day after Hamas Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel from Gaza. Hezbollah cited solidarity with Hamas.

Some 60,000 Israeli citizens in the country’s north have been forced to leave their homes, while Israel’s stated objective is to make its northern areas safe from Hezbollah rocket fire and allow those displaced residents to return.

“Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel also has a right to win. And Israel will win,” Netanyahu said.

He urged Lebanon to “take back your country” and return it to a path of peace and prosperity and take advantage of an opportunity that hasn’t existed in decades.

“If you don’t, Hezbollah will continue to try to fight Israel from densely populated areas at your expense. It doesn’t care if Lebanon is dragged into a wider war,” he added. “Christians, Druze, Muslims — Sunnis and Shiites — all of you are suffering because of Hezbollah’s futile war against Israel.

“Don’t let these terrorists destroy your future any more than they’ve already done,” Netanyahu added. “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

An Israeli police officer stands by as a firefighter as he puts out a fire after a rocket fired from Lebanon into Israel hit a residential house, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Rosh Pina, on September 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Out buying groceries in the northern town of Rosh Pina near the border, Matan Sofer had mixed feelings after Israel killed the head of Hezbollah, which fires rockets daily into Israel.

“I feel uncertain — we don’t know when this is going to end,” Sofer, 24, told AFP.

Israel airstrike LIVE updates

Hassan Nasrallah, who headed Hezbollah for more than 30 years, was killed in a Friday air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that Israel’s military said killed more than 20 other members of the group.

“Nasrallah was responsible for the deaths of many Israelis, so it is good news,” said Sofer, who also feared the outbreak of a wider regional war.

“But do we risk it getting worse, who knows?” he said.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah launched low-intensity cross-border strikes targeting Israeli troops after its Palestinian ally Hamas attacked Israel last October 7, sparking the Gaza war.

Down a colourful alley in Rosh Pina, one of its 3,000 residents, Batia Yelloz, rejoiced at the news that the Lebanese commander had been killed.

“May he go to hell,” said the 93-year-old who has lived in the town for seven decades and whose home was hit by rocket fire on Thursday.

Pointing to smashed flower pots, Yelloz said she was lucky to survive the strike, but saddened by the damage it caused to her home and to others.

Nearby cars and houses were also hit.

The past week’s waves of Israeli strikes targeting Hezbollah, a powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon, have intensified fears of more violence to come.

But residents of the leafy settlement of Rosh Pina still went about their daily business on Sunday, filling shops and restaurants.

‘Beginning of the end?’

Eva Cohen, 57, was evacuated in early October from the border city of Kiryat Shmona some seven kilometres (four miles) from the border.

Hezbollah has targeted Kiryat Shmona for the past year, and Cohen now works at a jeweller’s in Rosh Pina.

World leaders have been calling for at least a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, but Cohen believes it is too soon to end the war.

“It’s not over,” she said, sitting at a cafe with a friend.

“There are still many terrorists. We will return home when it is completely secure. Regardless of how long it takes, we’re patient.”

Her friend Simi Vaknin, 69, who is also from Kiryat Shmona, said her job pushed her to stay there despite the rocket fire, after the great majority of residents fled.

She is a municipal employee, and said she felt an obligation to help the hundreds of families who had remained in the city.

“It’s a ghost town. We shop for groceries and rush to a shelter,” said Vaknin. “It’s terrible.”

“I have faith in the army,” she said. “It will know whether to continue the war or end it.

“We don’t know what will happen to us — we can only hope things will get better.”

Military vehicles and reservists could be seen on a road downhill from Rosh Pinna. A few kilometres out of town, dozens of Israeli armoured vehicles manoeuvred in a field.

The Israeli army had on Wednesday called up two reservist brigades “for operational missions in the northern arena”.

On Sunday afternoon, the air raid sirens wailed once more in Rosh Pinna and in cities in northern Israel.

“Is it the beginning of the end? The risk of a new escalation? I’m confused, I really don’t know what tomorrow will look like,” said Sofer.