Israeli strikes reportedly pound near Crusader-built castle in Lebanon

Map showing Israel's incursion into Lebanon. (AP Digital Embed)

ADLOUN, Lebanon — Israeli air force and artillery strikes were reported on Saturday near the strategic mountain site of a Crusader-built castle in southern Lebanon as fighting raged in villages close to the city of Nabatiyeh.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported airstrikes and artillery shelling near the Crusader-built Beaufort castle that is about 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the Israeli border and overlooks wide parts of southern Lebanon. The strategic castle was held by Israeli troops for 18 years until they withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000.

Separately, an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip killed a nurse, the latest death since last year’s shaky ceasefire.

Israel’s military issued evacuation warnings for more than a dozen villages in southern Lebanon, a day after Lebanese and Israeli military officials held their first direct talks in decades at the Pentagon.

The situation in southern Lebanon was discussed during a meeting on Saturday between Lebanon’s president and prime minister who later said in a statement that they will intensify their contacts to make Israel stop demolition and bulldozing of homes and historical sites as well as its evacuation warnings.

Later on Saturday, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam used a televised speech to criticize Israeli airstrikes and its invasion of Lebanon. He accused Israel of “implementing a policy of total destruction of cities and towns” and of carrying out mass displacements.

He said Israel is trying to “uproot Lebanon’s memory and erase the people’s history,” adding that the government will do all it can to achieve a ceasefire, an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the return of displaced people to their homes.

Salam said the direct negotiations are not guaranteed to produce results and at the same time they don’t mean a surrender for Lebanon. “They are currently the least costly option,” Salam said. Another round of talks are scheduled to take place in Washington on Tuesday.

Israel will not gain security and stability through the “scorched earth policy,” Salam said.

Israel and Hezbollah exchange strikes despite ceasefire

Israeli troops have been advancing for days in villages close to Beaufort castle, including Yohmor and Zawtar al-Sharqieh, near the city of Nabatiyeh, after they crossed the strategic Litani River, which the Israeli military has used as a de facto boundary.

The incursion is the deepest by Israeli troops since the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

Large areas to the south are under Israeli military control, despite an April 17, U.S.-brokered ceasefire.

The National News Agency reported airstrikes on different parts of southern Lebanon, including in the village of Ansar that killed three people. A drone strike on a road linking the village of Ebba with Nabatiyeh wounded two Lebanese soldiers, the army said in a statement.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, said its fighters fired rockets at northern Israel’s largest city, Kiryat Shmona, on the border with Lebanon. The group said its attack was in retaliation for airstrikes that killed civilians in Lebanon. Hezbollah later said it also fired rockets toward the northern city of Safed.

Among those killed in southern Lebanon on Friday was Qais al-Bakir, his pregnant wife and their six children. The Syrian family died in an Israeli airstrike on the coastal village of Adloun, north of the city of Tyre.

The family, which belonged to Syria’s minority Alawite sect, had fled to Lebanon from the central province of Hama after the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria in December 2024. Some members of Assad’s Alawite sect have been subjected to revenge attacks by members of Islamist groups who removed the former president from power.

The family had been living in a sheep farm and they received no warning in advance of the strike on the village, said Ali al-Bakir the brother of the man killed. He said the family plans to send the bodies for burial in their hometown in Syria.

“He worked in farming and all he cared about was to feed his children,” his brother said.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war started on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran.

It has left 3,350 people dead in Lebanon and over 1 million people displaced.

Further strikes in Gaza

In the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian nurse was killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday, hospital authorities said. The strike hit a Hamas-manned police point in the central city of Deir al-Balah. At least three other people were wounded, according to the city’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which received the casualties.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The nurse was identified as Jamal Abu Aoun, who worked at Yafa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. His funeral was held at noon in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital’s courtyard.

He was the latest fatality among Palestinians in the coastal enclave since a fragile October ceasefire deal attempted to halt a more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the shaky ceasefire has seen almost daily Israeli fire. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones, killing at least 929 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.

Ahmad Mantash, The Associated Press

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.