UPDATE - Israeli airstrikes kills 2, injures 3 in southern Lebanon

UPDATES WITH DEATH TOLL, ANOTHER STRIKE, AND REVISED HEADLINE, DECK, AND LEDE

By Ikram Kouachi

Two people were killed and three others injured on Friday in Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, according to local authorities.

According to a statement from the Health Ministry's emergency operations center, the strike targeted a car in front of Tibnin Governmental Hospital in Tibnin town.

It said the figures are an initial toll, as medical teams are still responding at the scene.

In a second attack, an Israeli drone strike killed another person in a car, also in the Ansar town of the Nabatieh District in southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s official news agency, NNA.

Another drone attack, the agency reported, targeted the Al-Qalaa neighborhood between the towns of Harouf and Al-Duwayr.

Israel has carried out near-daily strikes on southern Lebanon since the outbreak of its war on Gaza on Oct. 7, leading to hundreds of deaths and mass displacement along the border region.

A ceasefire was reached in November 2024 following an exchange of cross-border attacks between the Hezbollah group and Israel since October 2023. The exchange escalated into a full-scale Israeli war by September 2024, killing more than 4,000 people and injuring around 17,000.

Under the truce, Israel was supposed to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon by January, but it only partially pulled out troops and maintains a military presence at five border outposts.