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

Under heavy U.S. pressure and fears of expanded Israeli strikes, Lebanon has committed to disarming Hezbollah, starting with the south. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Beirut:

UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warned Saturday against a “catastrophic” regional conflict as Israeli forces battled Hezbollah and Hamas militants on two fronts, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

Israel has faced a fierce diplomatic backlash over incidents in south Lebanon that saw five Blue Helmets wounded.

On Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said Israeli air strikes on two villages located near the capital Beirut killed nine people.

Israel had earlier told residents of south Lebanon not to return home, as its troops fought Hezbollah militants in a war that has killed more than 1,200 people since September 23, and forced more than a million others to flee their homes.

“For your own protection, do not return to your homes until further notice… Do not go south; anyone who goes south may put his life at risk,” Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X.

Hezbollah said Saturday it launched missiles across the border into northern Israel, where air raid sirens sounded and the military said it had intercepted a projectile.

In an interview with AFP, UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP he feared an Israeli escalation against Hezbollah in south Lebanon could soon spiral out of control “into a regional conflict with catastrophic impact for everyone”.

The UN force said five peacekeepers have been wounded by fighting in south Lebanon in just two days, and Tenenti said “a lot of damage” had been caused to its posts there.

Around Israel, markets were closed and public transport halted as observant Jews fasted and prayed on Yom Kippur.

After the holiday, attention is likely to turn again to Israel’s expected retaliation against Iran, which launched around 200 missiles at Israel on October 1.

Israel began pounding Gaza shortly after suffering its worst ever attacks from Iran-backed Hamas militants on October 7 last year, and it launched a ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon on September 30.

‘Deliberately targeted’

On Friday, Israel faced criticism from the UN, its Western allies and others over what it said was a “hit” on a UN peacekeeping position in Lebanon.

Two Sri Lankan peacekeepers were hurt in the second such incident in two days, UNIFIL said Friday.

Israel’s military said soldiers had responded to “an immediate threat” around 50 metres (yards) from the UNIFIL base in Naqura, and has pledged to carry out a “thorough review”.

The Irish military’s chief of staff, Sean Clancy, said it was “not an accidental act”, and French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed the peacekeepers had been “deliberately targeted”.

Both countries are major contributors to UNIFIL whose peacekeepers are on the front line of the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have so far failed, but Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said his government would ask the UN Security Council to issue a new resolution calling for a “full and immediate ceasefire”.

Lebanon’s military said Friday an Israeli strike on one of its positions in south Lebanon killed two soldiers.

In a show of support for Iran’s ally Hezbollah, the speaker of the Iranian parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf visited the site Saturday of a deadly Israeli strike earlier this week.

A source close to Hezbollah said the strike had targeted Hezbollah’s security chief Wafiq Safa, but neither Hezbollah nor Israel has confirmed he was the target.

Ghalibaf’s Lebanon visit, a signal of Tehran’s defiance, comes after Israel vowed to respond to Iran’s second-ever direct attack.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed that the response will be “deadly, precise and surprising”.

The United States is pushing for a “proportionate” response that would not tip the region into a wider war, with President Joe Biden urging Israel to avoid striking Iranian nuclear facilities or energy infrastructure.

Gaza deaths

Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing on Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has wrought devastation and, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, killed 42,175 people, a majority civilians.

Israeli operations in Gaza continue, with the army laying siege to an area around Jabalia in the north, causing more suffering for hundreds of thousands of people trapped there, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Adraee, the Israeli military spokesman, posted another evacuation warning Saturday for an area near Jabalia.

“The specified area, including the shelters within it, is considered a dangerous combat zone,” Adraee said on X, ordering residents to move to the humanitarian zone in southern Gaza.

Some residents said they were not prepared to do so.

“They tell us to go south, but we won’t go because of the dangers and the army is shooting at people there,” 27-year-old Sami Asliya told AFP.

“There is no safe place, neither in the south nor in the north — everyone is at risk of death,” he said.

On Friday, Gaza’s civil defence agency reported 30 people killed in Israeli strikes in the area, including on schools being used as shelter by displaced people.

An AFP journalist in Gaza reported heavy shelling, explosions and gunfire Saturday further south in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

People inspect the rubble of a house where a Hezbollah member and his family were killed in Israeli bombardment.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said on March 12 it launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for a strike on the country’s east that killed one person the day before.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

“Hezbollah launched “more than a hundred katyusha rockets” on Tuesday morning at two military bases in the occupied Golan Heights,” the group said in a statement. This was “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, it added.

On Monday, Israeli air strikes near Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek killed one person, in the second raid on the Hezbollah stronghold since cross-border hostilities began. The Israeli military confirmed its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, killing two Hezbollah members. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 317 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.