Israel strikes just south of Beirut ahead of second day of critical ceasefire talks

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli strike Wednesday hit a car on a busy highway just south of Beirut, hours before the second day of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington are set to take place.

The strike in Khaldeh came without warning, and it was not immediately clear if the person targeted was killed. Israel usually says it targets members of the Hezbollah militant group in these drone strikes.

Israel and Lebanon on Monday reached a U.S.-brokered agreement where Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs and Hezbollah would end its attacks on northern Israel. The agreement was made hours after Israel announced that it was going to launch strikes across the sprawling urban neighborhoods near the Lebanese capital in what would have been the most intense strikes since a nominal ceasefire went into effect on April 17.

The State Department said progress was made during the first day of talks on Tuesday. Lebanon hopes to widen the scope of the ceasefire so it becomes comprehensive across the country. Israel wants to disarm Hezbollah immediately before it ends its operations in Lebanon and withdraws its troops from dozens of villages and towns.

Not long after the strike on Khaldeh, the Israeli military said it intercepted what it called a hostile aircraft coming from southern Lebanon, but did not immediately blame Hezbollah. Hezbollah has not claimed a cross-border attack since the agreement.

Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continued, especially in and around the battered cities of Tyre and Nabatiyeh. Overnight, two strikes near Tyre killed four Syrians and two Palestinians.

Israel overnight warned the Christian neighborhoods in the coastal city of Tyre that Hezbollah members are among them. Many Lebanese Shiite Muslims fled to those areas in recent days because they were spared from the aerial bombardment along the Mediterranean coast.

After the warning, the Lebanese army deployed to the Christian district of Tyre in an effort to prevent Israeli attacks there and to show that Hezbollah has no armed presence in the area.

Israel launched an invasion of southern Lebanon days after the latest war was sparked on March 2 when Iran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets towards northern Israel in solidarity with Iran. Israeli troops have pushed deeper into Lebanon over the past week, as Hezbollah continues to claim rocket and drone attacks.

The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million people. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, at least 27 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.

Among the 27 killed was a soldier in southern Lebanon, whose death was announced late Monday by Israel’s military. It added that seven more soldiers were wounded in the incident, three of them severely.

Hezbollah’s use of hard-to-detect fiber-optic drones has been deadly for the Israeli military, which is struggling to respond.