ISRAELI attacks have killed at least four people in southern Lebanon’s Nabatieh district, the state news agency reports, as Israel continues to pummel the country in defiance of a three-week extension of a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
In a statement on Saturday, Lebanon Ministry of Public Health’s emergency operations centre said two Israeli raids on a truck and a motorcycle in the town of Yohmor al-Shaqif killed four people, the Lebanese National News Agency reported.
Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, reporting from the city of Tyre, said the attacks were carried out north of the Litani River, below which Israel has unilaterally declared to be operating.
Meanwhile, in the city of Bint Jbeil, also in southern Lebanon, Israeli soldiers reportedly blew up buildings on Saturday morning.
Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground separately reported bombings in the city of Khiam, including on residential blocks.
Israel’s ongoing spree is “part of a continued pattern of Israeli military activity, despite what is ostensibly a ceasefire”, Pett said, adding that the “rumble and thud of explosions” could be heard across southern swaths of the country.
“That is Israel demolishing houses and buildings,” she said.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said that Israeli attacks since March 2 have killed 2,496 people and wounded 7,719.
The attacks are the latest to rock southern Lebanon since United States President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire extension on Thursday. Within hours, the Israeli military claimed it had “eliminated” six Hezbollah fighters in an exchange of fire near Bint Jbeil.
Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said the ceasefire was “meaningless in light of Israel’s insistence on hostile acts, including assassinations, shelling, and gunfire”.
He added that Israeli attacks meant Hezbollah retains the “right to retaliate”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “maintaining full freedom of action against any threat” and claimed Hezbollah was “trying to sabotage” the pause.
Analysts say the ceasefire arrangement has failed to halt hostilities and may never have been intended to do so.
Ali Rizk, a security affairs analyst in Beirut, told Al Jazeera: “We have to remember that this was a ceasefire between the Lebanese state and the Israeli state.”
“We’ve had Hezbollah parliamentarians say that this ceasefire doesn’t concern them,” he added.
Rizk said the process initiated by Washington has been viewed with scepticism in Lebanon.
“It’s been seen as an attempt to take aim at Hezbollah, first and foremost, more than actually being about real peace or real calm,” he said.
He went further, arguing the truce lacked substance from the outset.
“I think that the ceasefire basically never existed to begin with. It was an arrangement reached between Israeli officials to allow for these negotiations, and the number one of these negotiations is to dismantle Hezbollah,” he said.