Lebanese official media said Thursday that two engineers working for a company sanctioned by the United States over alleged Hezbollah ties were killed in an Israeli strike on the country’s south.
Israel has been carrying out near-daily strikes on Lebanon, usually saying it is targeting Hezbollah operatives or sites, despite a November truce aimed at ending over a year of hostilities, including two months of open war with the Iran-backed group.
“The Israeli enemy strike that targeted a vehicle on the Jarmak-Khardali road led to a preliminary toll of two dead and another wounded,” Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The area is around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Israeli border.
An AFP correspondent saw the skeletal charred wreckage of the car as emergency and security personnel attended the site.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the two men killed were on their way to inspect damage from previous Israeli strikes for a company it identified as Meamar.
In September 2020, the US Treasury sanctioned Meamar Construction “for being owned, controlled, or directed by” Hezbollah.
It accused the group of using the company’s “privately owned appearance” to conceal money transfers for Hezbollah and evade US sanctions.
– Reconstruction stalled –
Authorities in cash-strapped Lebanon have yet to begin reconstruction efforts in parts of the country that were damaged in the recent conflict, and have been hoping for international support, particularly from Gulf countries.
Persistent Israeli strikes have hampered the efforts, with raids reported on temporary prefabricated buildings as well as on heavy machinery.
On Monday, Lebanon’s health ministry reported that one person killed in an Israeli strike on an excavator in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The United Nations said Wednesday that it had verified the deaths of 103 civilians in Lebanon since the ceasefire.
Israel has also kept troops in five areas of southern Lebanon it deems strategic.
Under intense US pressure and fears of expanded Israeli military action, the Lebanese government is seeking to disarm Hezbollah, and the army has drawn up a plan to do so beginning in the country’s south.
Hezbollah is the only major armed group that kept its weapons following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, doing so in the name of resistance against Israel.
The group insists that Israel must withdraw and stop its attacks, release Lebanese prisoners it captured during the recent hostilities and allow reconstruction to begin before it can discuss the fate of its weapons.
In March, the World Bank put the war’s total economic cost on Lebanon at $14 billion, including $6.8 billion in damage to physical structures.
lg/js
© Agence France-Presse
