Israel says it struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites in Syria, testing a fragile ceasefire

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said Saturday, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that halted months of fighting between the sides but has seen continued sporadic fire.

The military said it struck sites that had been used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah also did not immediately comment. Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, citing ceasefire violations, several times since the truce began on Wednesday.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah does not address the war in Gaza, where fighting rages on. On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a car killed five people, according to Muneer Alboursh, a senior Palestinian health official, who said the toll included three employees of the food charity World Central Kitchen. The charity could not immediately be reached for comment and made no mention of the incident on its social media.

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The Israeli military said it struck a vehicle carrying a militant involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. It said it was looking into the reported ties to WCK, but said the car was unmarked and had not coordinated aid delivery with the military as charities have done during the war.

At Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of one of the men said to have been killed in the strike. A heap of belongings — burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo — lay splayed on the hospital floor.

An Israeli strike in April on a WCK convoy killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military said it was a mistake.

The Israeli strike in Syria came as insurgents there breached the country’s largest city, Aleppo, in a shock offensive that added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.

The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of Lebanon’s Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.

The repeated bursts of violence — with no reports of serious casualties — reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise appeared to hold. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has also accused Israel of the same in the days since it took effect.

Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, were streaming south to their homes, despite warnings by the Israeli and Lebanese militaries to stay away from certain areas.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone attacked a car in the southern village of Majdal Zoun. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said three people were wounded, including a 7-year-old child. Majdal Zoun, near the Mediterranean Sea, is close to where Israeli troops still have a presence.

The military said earlier Saturday that its forces, who remain in southern Lebanon until they withdraw gradually over the 60-day period, had been operating to distance “suspects” in the region, without elaborating, and said troops had located and seized weapons found hidden in a mosque.

Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to strike against any perceived violations. Israel has made returning the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis home the goal of the war with Hezbollah but Israelis, concerned Hezbollah was not deterred and could still attack northern communities, have been apprehensive about returning home.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its assault on southern Israel the day before. Israel and Hezbollah kept up a low-level conflict of cross-border fire for nearly a year, until Israel escalated its fight with a sophisticated attack that detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters. It followed that up with an intense aerial bombardment campaign against Hezbollah assets, killing many of its top leaders including longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, and it launched a ground invasion in early October.

More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ October 2023 attack, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians and took some 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say more than half the dead were women and children.

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Mroue reported from Beirut and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.

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