Three Syrian children killed in ‘cruel’ Israeli attack on Lebanon | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

UN condemns Israeli attack that killed children reportedly playing outside their home in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese media reported that at least five Syrians, including three children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, while the Israeli military and the armed group Hezbollah continued to exchange fire across the border.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Tuesday that the three children were killed in an Israeli airstrike “on farmland in the village of Umm Toot,” while two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike on the road to Kfar Tebnit, also in southern Lebanon.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF condemned the deadly attacks.

“The death of three more children in an airstrike today as they were reportedly playing outside their home in southern Lebanon is horrifying,” the agency said in a post on X.

It went on to say that “as long as the violence continues, even more children are at risk.”

The AFP news agency reported, citing a Lebanese security source, that the other two Syrians killed on Tuesday were “civilians” who were working and swimming in the area.

The NNA stated that “eyewitnesses reported that there were two people on the motorcycle and that a second collision occurred when several citizens tried to approach the motorcycle.”

The killings came as Israeli forces continued to exchange fire with Hezbollah, which has launched attacks on Israel in support of Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The Lebanese armed group has announced that it will cease hostilities once Israeli authorities and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, agree to a ceasefire to end the brutal war that has killed at least 38,713 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,139 people in Israel.

Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) shows that Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon have carried out at least 7,400 attacks across the border since the Gaza war began in October last year.

Israel carried out about 83 percent of these attacks. In total, there were 6,142 incidents in which at least 543 people were killed in Lebanon. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks in which at least 21 Israelis were killed.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that its air force had launched strikes on parts of southern Lebanon after detecting more than 50 projectiles fired from the neighboring country. The military said it had attacked Hezbollah sites, including a “terrorist cell” in the Yarin area, which is close to Umm Toot.

The Lebanese armed group subsequently issued a statement saying it had fired volleys of Katyusha rockets at northern Israel in response.

In separate statements, the group cited both “the deaths of two civilians” in Kfar Tebnit and “the horrific massacre in the village of Umm Toot” as reasons for the retaliatory fire.

The violence is largely confined to the border region and raises fears of an open conflict between the two enemies, who last fought a war in the summer of 2006.