The Israeli forces in southern Lebanon opened fire on Sunday on Sunday withdrawal in accordance with a cease-fire agreement, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 80, reported the Lebanese health authorities.
Among the dead are two women and a Lebanese army soldier, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. People were reportedly injured in more than a dozen villages in the border area.
Demonstrators, some of which wore Hezbollah flags, tried to enter several villages to protest the failure of Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the 60-day period stipulated in a ceasefire agreement- fire that ended the war between Israel and Hezbollah at the end of November.
Israel said he had to stay longer because the Lebanese army was not deployed in all regions of southern Lebanon to ensure that Hezbollah does not restore its presence in the region. The Lebanese army said that it could not deploy as long as the Israeli forces were not withdrawn.
The Israeli army accused Hezbollah of firing Sunday demonstrations.
He said in a statement that his troops had shot to “eliminate threats in a number of areas where suspects have been identified as an approach”. He added that a certain number of suspects being near the Israeli troops had been apprehended and were under interrogation.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Sunday in a statement to the population of southern Lebanon that “Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are not negotiable, and I will follow this question to the highest levels to guarantee your rights and your dignity “.
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He urged them to “show restraint and trust the Lebanese armed forces”. The Lebanese army, in a separate statement, said that it escorted civilians in certain cities in the border area and called on the inhabitants to follow the military instructions to ensure their security.
The president of the Parliament, Nabih Berri, whose Mouvement Amal Party is allied with Hezbollah and which served as an interlocutor between the militant group and the United States during the cease-fire negotiations, said that the effusion of Sunday blood “is a clear and urgent call to the international community to act immediately and to force Israel must withdraw from the occupied Lebanese territories.
A spokesperson in the Arab language of the Israeli army, Avichay Adraee, posted on X that Hezbollah had sent “rioters” and “tried to stir up the situation to hide his situation and his status in Lebanon and in the world Arab ”.
He called on Sunday morning residents of the border area not to try to regain their villages.
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the United Nations Mission of Peacekeeping known as Finul, Lieutenant-General Aroldo Lázaro, called in a joint declaration Israel and Lebanon to comply with their obligations under the cease-fire agreement.
“The fact is that the deadlines envisaged in the November agreement have not been respected,” the statement said. “As we saw tragically this morning, the conditions are not yet met for the safe return of citizens to their villages along the blue line. »»
The Finuli said that new violence was likely to compromise the fragile security situation in the region and “the prospects for stability opened by the cessation of hostilities and the formation of a government in Lebanon”.
He calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, with the withdrawal of arms and unauthorized goods in the south of the Litani river, the redeployment of the Lebanese army throughout southern Lebanon and guaranteeing the safe and worthy return of the displaced civilians of the two sides of the blue river. Double.
An AP team found itself blocked during the night in a finite base near Mays al-Jabal after the Israeli army erected roadblocks on Saturday when it joined a patrol Peace. Journalists reported heard shots and deaf noises on Sunday morning from the base, and peacekeeping soldiers said dozens of demonstrators had gathered nearby.
In the village of Aita Al Shaab, families wandered over on flattened concrete structures in search of the vestiges of the houses they had left behind. No Israeli force was present.
“These are our houses,” said Hussein Bajouk, one of the residents of return. “Even if they destroy, we will rebuild. »»
Bajouk added that he is convinced that the former head of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, killed during an Israeli strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut in September, is really still alive.
“I do not know how long we will wait, another month or two … But the Sayyed will come and speak,” he said, using an honorary title for Nasrallah.
On the other side of the border, in the Kibbutz of Manara, Orna Weinberg noted the ravages of the recent conflict on its neighbors and the Lebanese villages on the other side of the border. The noise of the shots echoed sporadically in the distance.
“Unfortunately, we have no way to defend our own children without harming their children,” said Weinberg, 58. “It is a tragedy for all parties.”
Some 112,000 Lebanese remain moved, over more than a million who fled their home during the war.
& Copy 2025 The Canadian Press