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Israeli Airstrike Kills Hezbollah Member and Woman in South Lebanon

An Israeli airstrike targeted two vehicles near a Lebanese army checkpoint in south Lebanon on Sunday, resulting in the death of a Hezbollah member and a woman, as well as causing injuries to several others, according to Lebanese state media and health officials.

The strike, which took place in the town of Kafra, appears to indicate a shift in Israeli strategy towards targeted killings in Lebanon. This change comes after over three months of frequent clashes with Hezbollah militants on the border, amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Hezbollah confirmed that one of its members, Fadel Shaar, was killed in the strike. Several hours later, Lebanon’s National News Agency announced the death of Samar al-Sayyed Mohammed, a civilian woman who was wounded in the attack.

Local civil defense and hospital officials reported multiple injuries resulting from the airstrike. Disturbing video footage from the scene showed a passenger sedan engulfed in flames next to a small truck halted in the middle of the road.

The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in early October, Hezbollah forces have engaged in near-daily clashes with Israeli troops along the border. Initially limited to a narrow strip of land close to the border, recent weeks have seen Israel adopt a strategy of targeted killings of Hezbollah and allied group members, extending the strikes to areas further away from the border.

On Saturday, another strike near the Lebanese port city of Tyre resulted in the deaths of two individuals in a car, one of whom was a Hezbollah commander. Two others were killed in a nearby orchard. Ali Hudruj, the Hezbollah commander, was buried on Sunday in south Lebanon, while Mohammad Baqir Diab, a civilian and tech sector businessman, was laid to rest in Beirut.

On January 2, an Israeli airstrike in a Beirut suburb killed Saleh Arouri, a top Hamas official. This marked the first such strike in Lebanon’s capital since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Speaking at Hudruj’s funeral, Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hussein Jeshi accused Israel of “resorting to the method of assassinating some members of the resistance” as a response to their failure to achieve a military victory against Hamas after more than 100 days of war in Gaza.

In retaliation for the strike in Kafra and other attacks targeting Lebanese villages and civilians, Hezbollah launched an attack against the town of Avivim in northern Israel, as announced in a statement released by the militant group.

Israel, on the other hand, did not comment specifically on the Kafra strike but confirmed targeting Hezbollah locations in multiple areas of Lebanon on Sunday. Additionally, Israel reported that a house in Avivim was hit by an anti-tank missile, causing no injuries.

Amid the rising possibility of a regional conflict on multiple fronts, officials from the United States and Europe have engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Lebanon to prevent the escalation of the conflict into a full-scale war on the Lebanese front.

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Reporting by Sewell in Beirut. Contributions by Ahmad Mantash in Sidon, Ali Sharaffedine in Beirut, and Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem.

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