BEIRUT: Five UN peacekeepers were wounded in an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon, the United Nations said, in a raid that also killed three civilians.
Israel launched a barrage of strikes after Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it carried out a missile attack targeting a military base near Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday.
The Wednesday attack came as Lebanon’s health ministry said 40 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold in the east.
Hezbollah and Israel have been at war since late September, when Israel broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war continues.
The territory’s civil defence agency said 12 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in north Gaza on Thursday.
Hezbollah began low intensity strikes on Israel last year in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the Gaza war.
The raid in which the UN peacekeepers were wounded struck near an army checkpoint in south Lebanon’s main city Sidon.
“The Israeli enemy targeted a car while it was passing through the Awali checkpoint,” the army said in a statement.
Three civilians in the car were killed, the military said, and three soldiers at the checkpoint were wounded along with five members of the Malaysian contingent of the UN peacekeeping force, UNIFIL.
“Five peacekeepers were lightly injured and treated by the Lebanese Red Cross on the spot,” UNIFIL said in a statement, urging all sides to avoid endangering peacekeepers or civilians.
The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the reports. Israel launched raids across the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight, with one hitting an area near the airport.
