A local Hezbollah commander in charge of a rocket unit was killed in a drone strike in southern Lebanon overnight, the Israel Defense Forces said Saturday.
According to the military, the strike near Deir ez-Zahrani killed Muhammad Ali Jamoul, the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket unit in the Beaufort Castle area.
The IDF said Jamoul had advanced numerous rocket attacks on Israel during the war and was recently involved in attempting to restore Hezbollah infrastructure in the area.
His actions “constituted a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” the military added.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said a man was killed when an Israeli drone targeted his car as he was heading to pray at a mosque in Deir ez-Zahrani, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Israeli border.
During the ongoing ceasefire in Lebanon, the IDF has continued to strike Hezbollah operatives and sites it says violate the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.
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Since the start of the ceasefire, the IDF says it has killed over 180 Hezbollah operatives, including 38 senior commanders and another 28 lower-ranking officers in the terror group.
The November 2024 ceasefire ended more than a year of fighting, including some two months of open war, between Israel and Hezbollah.
The fighting began on October 8, 2023, when the Iran-backed terror group started attacking Israel daily with missiles and drones in support of Hamas.
Under the terms of the deal, Israel was obligated to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon under the ceasefire. It pulled out from all but five strategic posts located several hundred meters inside Lebanon, which it says are necessary to defend Israeli communities.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Lebanon’s army has dismantled most of Hezbollah’s posts and weapons stockpile in the country’s south, with the help of Israeli intelligence passed along by the US, with Israeli and American officials said to be pleasantly surprised by the progress.
But the report, which also cited Arab officials, noted that the army still faces the challenge of completing the job and implementing its plan to disarm the Iran-backed terror group and assert control over the entire country.
Agencies contributed to this report.
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