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Israel ratchets up Lebanon assault as Hezbollah rejects ‘farce’ truce
Israel continued to carry out deadly strikes across Lebanon on Friday despite the announcement of a new US-brokered ceasefire agreement reached by Lebanese and Israeli officials in Washington, DC.
The violence has pushed the number of casualties higher, with Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health reporting that at least 3,526 people have been killed and 10,733 wounded in Israeli attacks since March 2.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has dismissed the ceasefire as a “farce”, warning that northern occupied territories will remain a target as long as Israeli forces continue bombing Lebanon, raising more doubts about the prospects for a lasting truce.
Lebanese and Israeli envoys meeting in Washington this week agreed to a conditional truce that Hezbollah flatly rejected, with the group instead demanding a comprehensive ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Friday that the resistance group would withdraw from the area south of Lebanon's Litani River if these conditions were met.
Israel has staged its deepest incursion in two decades into Lebanon since the start of the war with Iran, which it launched in conjunction with its ally, the US.
On Friday, the Israeli military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee warned residents of six towns and villages including south Lebanon's Sarafand, a town on the coastal road between Tyre and Sidon, to immediately evacuate.
He earlier warned three villages north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon to leave their homes.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported mass displacement from two of the three villages named in the first warning, and it subsequently reported strikes on some of the threatened areas.
Overnight, Israeli strikes killed seven people in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, a source from Lebanon's civil defense told AFP.
In rejecting the truce Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Thursday called on the Lebanese government to halt "the farce and humiliation called direct talks" with Israel.
"The ceasefire must be comprehensive... without the Israeli enemy having the freedom to kill," Qassem said.