A Lebanese army soldier was killed Wednesday by an Israeli airstrike that hit his vehicle on the road linking Burj al-Muluk and Qalaa in southern Lebanon, the army said in a statement. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports.
A day earlier, three soldiers were killed by an airstrike that targeted an army post in the town of Sarafand, near the coastal city of Saida.
Wissam Khalifeh, a resident of Sarafand who lives next to the army post and was injured in the strike, said he was shocked that it was targeted.
“It’s a safe residential neighborhood. There is nothing here at all” that would present a target, he said. “Regarding the martyred soldiers, I don’t even know if there was a gun in the center. Why did this strike happen? We have no idea.”
The Lebanese army has not been an active participant in the fighting between Israeli forces and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah over the past 13 months, but more than 40 soldiers have been killed in the conflict.
Altogether, more than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since Oct. 8, 2023, the vast majority of them in the past two months.
On Sunday, Israel bombed a Lebanese army post in Mari, in Hasbaya province, killing two soldiers and critically injured three others.
In response, the Lebanese government announced on Monday plans to file a formal complaint with the UN Security Council on the “repeated attacks” on the Lebanese army, citing repeated violations of international law.
