An Israeli strike killed one person in southern Lebanon on Friday, the Lebanese health ministry said, with Israel accusing the slain man of being a Hezbollah intelligence operative.
The latest attack, despite a November ceasefire, comes a day after Israeli strikes killed seven people in the eastern Bekaa Valley, two of them members of leftist militant group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The man killed in Friday’s strike, Mohammad Shahadeh, ran a local news website and colleagues took to social media to offer their condolences to his family.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said his car was hit on the main Sidon-Tyre road, along the Mediterranean coast in the country’s south.
Social media users circulated an obituary released by militant group Hezbollah, which described him as a “martyr on the road to Jerusalem”, the term the group uses for members killed in fighting with Israel.
Israel’s military said Shahadeh was “responsible for intelligence” in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force.
A military statement said he had “operated to advance the force buildup and operational readiness of Hezbollah’s Radwan force” during hostilities which escalated into two months of full-blown war in September.
The PFLP meanwhile mourned “commander and Central Committee member Mohammad Khalil Wishah” and “field commander Mufid Hassan Hussein, who were martyred yesterday (Thursday) in a treacherous Zionist assassination crime on the road between Syria and Lebanon”.
The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying Wishah was part of the PFLP’s “military-security department in Syria” since his predecessor was assassinated in an Israeli air strike in Beirut in September.
The military alleged that Wishah “recently operated to advance military operations against Israeli targets”.
Israel has repeatedly struck Lebanon despite last year’s truce and has threatened to continue its attacks until Hezbollah has been disarmed.
This week, the Lebanese government agreed an end of year target for the disarmament of the militant group and tasked the army with drawing up a plan by the end of August.
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© Agence France-Presse
