At least 13 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
The drone strike hit a car on Tuesday in the car park of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.
At least four people were wounded in the attack, the ministry said, adding that “ambulances are still transporting more wounded to nearby hospitals.”
Israel said it struck members of the Palestinian armed group Hamas who were operating in a training compound in the refugee camp.
“When we say we will not tolerate any threat on our northern border, this means all terrorist groups operating in the region,” the Israeli military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a statement. “We will continue to act forcefully against Hamas’s attempts to establish a foothold in Lebanon and eliminate its elements that threaten our security.”
Hamas denied Israel’s claim, calling it a “fabrication” and stressing the group doesn’t have training facilities in Lebanon’s refugee camps.
“The Zionist bombardment was a barbaric aggression against our innocent Palestinian people as well as Lebanon’s sovereignty,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Tuesday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes on cars elsewhere in the country’s south killed two people.
Israel has killed several officials from Palestinian factions including Hamas in Lebanon since it launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 69,483 Palestinians and wounded 170,706. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
A day after Israel launched its war on Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets towards Israel, which responded with shelling and air strikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in a conflict that Israel escalated into a full-blown war in late September 2024.
Israel’s war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians. In Israel, 127 people were killed, including 80 soldiers.
The war halted in late November 2024 with a United States-brokered ceasefire, but since then, Israel has carried out dozens of air attacks on Lebanon, accusing Hezbollah of trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and about 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.
“There are daily violations of the ceasefire by Israel in Lebanon, and it would be unfair at this stage to pin the blame on the Lebanese government,” Lebanese political analyst Karim Emile Bitar told Al Jazeera. “The Lebanese government went above and beyond what was required … and took a historic decision to ask the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah.”
However, Bitar said, Israel has not lived up to its end of the bargain. Under the terms of the ceasefire signed on November 27, 2024, Israel was meant to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon by January 26, a deadline it missed.
