Israeli forces kill 2 Lebanese soldiers, injure 2 UN peacekeepers

Associated Press Beirut: An Israeli airstrike killed two Lebanese soldiers and wounded three on Friday, Lebanon's military said, just hours after the Israeli military fired on the headquarters of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, injuring two of them for the second day in a row. The incidents entangling both Lebanon's official army which has largely stayed on the sidelines of the conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon raised alarm as Israel broadens its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across the country and a ground invasion at the border.

In central Beirut, rescue workers combed Friday through the rubble of a collapsed building, searching for survivors of an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens in the Lebanese capital the night before. Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel over the past year in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas' devastating Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 250 taken hostage. In return, Israel's military has pounded Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, killing more than 2,237 Lebanese including Hezbollah fighters, civilians and medical personnel according to the Lebanese health ministry. Among them, the ministry reported late Friday, were a two-year-old and 16-year-old killed by airstrikes in the southern village of Baysarieh. Hezbollah attacks have killed 29 civilians as well as 39 Israeli soldiers, both in northern Israel since October 2023, and in southern Lebanon since Sept. 30, when Israel launched its ground invasion.

Israel strikes a Lebanese army checkpoint On Friday, the Lebanese army said an Israeli airstrike hit a building near a military checkpoint in the southern Bint Jbeil province. The Israeli military said it had been targeting Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon when reports emerged that it had hit several Lebanese army soldiers. The Israeli army said it investigated the incident but remained “unaware of any Lebanese army facilities found in the area of the strike." Lebanon's army is not a party to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah — after Israel launched its ground invasion on Sept. 30, Lebanese soldiers withdrew some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from their observation posts along the border. The only direct clash between the two national armies occurred on October 3, when Israeli tank fire hit a Lebanese army post also in the area of Bint Jbeil, killing a soldier and prompting Lebanese soldiers to return fire.

Both Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers are deployed in southern Lebanon to enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended a bloody monthlong 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. But Lebanon's army is no match for Hezbollah, and neither its soldiers nor the peacekeepers have been capable of preventing the Shiite militants from entrenching themselves in the border region. Israel accuses Hezbollah of establishing militant infrastructure along the border in violation of the U.N. resolution. Israel hits U.N. peacekeepers again, wounding two The Israeli military opened fire near the U.N. headquarters in Lebanon's southern town of Naqoura on Friday, the army said, hitting the observation post and injuring two peacekeepers for the second time in as many days.