Three Syrian children killed in ‘horrific’ Israeli attack on Lebanon

UN condemns Israeli attack that killed children who were reportedly playing outside their home in south Lebanon.

Israeli air attacks in southern Lebanon have killed at least five Syrians, including three children, Lebanese media reported, as Israel’s military and the Hezbollah armed group continued to trade fire across the border.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said on Tuesday that the three children were killed in an Israeli air raid “that targeted farmland in the village of Umm Toot”, while two others were killed in an Israeli drone attack on the Kfar Tebnit road, which is also in south Lebanon.

The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) condemned the deadly attacks.

“The killing of 3 more children by an airstrike today as they were reportedly playing in front of their home in South Lebanon is horrific,” the agency said in a post on X.

It added that “more children are at risk as long as the violence continues”.

The AFP news agency, citing a Lebanese security source, reported that the other two Syrians killed on Tuesday were “civilians” who worked in the area and had been swimming there.

The NNA said that “eyewitnesses reported that the motorbike was carrying two people and that when a number of citizens tried to approach the bike … it was subjected to a second strike”.

The killings come as Israeli forces continued to trade fire with Hezbollah, which launched attacks on Israel in support of Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip.

The Lebanese armed group has said it will cease hostilities as soon as Israeli authorities and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, agree on a ceasefire deal to end the brutal war which has killed at least 38,713 Palestinians in Gaza and 1,139 people in Israel.

Dates from the the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), show that Israel, Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon have carried out at least 7,400 attacks across the border since the war on Gaza began in October last year.

Israel conducted about 83 percent of these attacks, totalling 6,142 incidents, and killing at least 543 people in Lebanon. Hezbollah and other armed groups were responsible for 1,258 attacks that killed at least 21 Israelis.

Israel’s military said on Tuesday that its air force launched attacks on parts of south Lebanon after detecting more than 50 projectiles from the neighbouring country. The military said it attacked Hezbollah sites, including a “terrorist cell” in the Yarin area, which is close to Umm Toot.

The Lebanese armed group issued a statement afterwards saying that it launched rounds of “Katyusha rockets” at northern Israel in response.

The group in separate statements mentioned both “the death of two civilians” in Kfar Tebnit and “the horrible massacre in Umm Toot village” as reasons for the retaliatory fire.

The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, who last went to war in the summer of 2006.