https://arab.news/443je
- ‘Once again, southern Lebanon falls under the fire of blatant Israeli aggression against civilian facilities. Without justification or even a pretext’
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned Israel on Saturday for its overnight strikes in southern Lebanon, which killed one person and wounded seven, and briefly cutting a highway that links Beirut with parts of south Lebanon.
“Once again, southern Lebanon falls under the fire of blatant Israeli aggression against civilian facilities. Without justification or even a pretext. However, the gravity of the latest aggression lies in the fact that it comes after the agreement to cease hostilities in Gaza, and after the Palestinian side’s approval of the terms of this agreement, which included a mechanism to contain weapons and render them inoperative,” Aoun said on X.
The pre-dawn airstrikes on the village of Al-Msayleh struck a place that sold heavy machinery, destroying a large number of vehicles.
A vehicle carrying vegetables that happened to be passing by at the time of the strikes was hit, killing one person and wounding another, according to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV.
The Lebanese health ministry later said that the one slain was a Syrian citizen, while the wounded were a Syrian national and six Lebanese, including two women.
Above, heavy machinery destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the southern village of Msayleh, Lebanon on Oct. 11, 2025. (AP)
“This raises fundamental challenges for us as Lebanese and for the international community. Among them is the question of whether there is someone contemplating compensating for Gaza in Lebanon, to ensure their need for sustaining political profiteering through fire and killing.”
The Israeli military claimed it struck a place where machinery was stored to be used to rebuild infrastructure for the militant Hezbollah group.
Since the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war ended in late November with a US-brokered ceasefire, Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes killing dozens of people. Israel accuses Hezbollah of trying to rebuild its capabilities after the group suffered heavy losses during the war.
Earlier this month, the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, called for renewed efforts to bring a permanent end to hostilities in Lebanon following the war. He said that until the end of September, they have verified 103 civilians killed in Lebanon since the ceasefire.
The most recent Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.
The war started when Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September 2024.
• with agencies