Israeli strikes reported in south Lebanon as Defense Minister Katz vows to ‘settle scores’
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Lebanese media reported Israeli airstrikes in the Ali Taher Ridge in southern Lebanon Saturday overnight, a day after three Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded by an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah.
The reported strikes came hours after residents of the Upper Galilee were notified by local authorities that explosions were expected to be heard due to IDF activity in Lebanon.
With fighting threatening to ramp up in Lebanon and in Gaza, Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a Sunday morning post on X: “No score on any front will remain unsettled.”
He added: “We will forcefully defend our soldiers and citizens.”
His comments come after overnight reports of strikes in southern Lebanon, following an attack on troops early Saturday in which three soldiers were wounded. Israel has not confirmed the reports.
Earlier Israeli strikes killed 11 in Lebanon, according to local authorities on Saturday, including three children and two women.
Israeli strikes are targeting the strategic Ali al Taher Ridge in southern Lebanon, overlooking Nabatieh.
It is possible we are witnessing some sort of special operation pic.twitter.com/u0agbN3S6M
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 15, 2026
On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an airstrike in the southern Lebanon town of Deir al-Zahrani the previous day. It said the Saturday morning strike on Ali Muhammad Fakhr al-Din came in response to a Hezbollah explosive drone attack in the predawn hours Saturday that seriously wounded three soldiers. Lebanese media reported that the Deir al-Zahrani strike on Saturday morning killed two people.
Al-Din, also known as Abu Hassan Alaa, was identified by the IDF as a “senior commander” in Hezbollah’s Badr regional division. The regional unit is tasked with the area north of the Litani River. The IDF said that as part of his role, Hassan Alaa took part in numerous attacks on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
The statement from the IDF did not address the claims of overnight strikes in southern Lebanon.
The army had announced previously that among those killed Saturday was Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, a battalion commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, who was hit in a strike in the town of Ansar.
The Israeli strikes drew harsh criticism from Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun, who accused Israel of sending a “clear message” ahead of the next round of US-sponsored negotiations between the countries.
The IDF said three of its troops operating in the area of the Ali Taher Ridge were seriously wounded Friday overnight after being hit by an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah around 2:30 a.m. The drone exploded near soldiers of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, seriously wounding an officer and two soldiers, all three of whom were taken to a hospital for treatment.
In a rare English-language statement published on Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said “Hezbollah violated the ceasefire in Lebanon by attacking our soldiers in the security zone, which protects Israeli communities just across the border.”
“The IDF responded by striking the Hezbollah terror headquarters which ordered the attack,” the PMO said. “Only later did the IDF learn that Hezbollah deliberately put civilians in that military compound,” the statement added, acknowledging the civilian casualties.
The military also confirmed that women and children had been killed and said they were family members of the senior Hezbollah commander it targeted.
“The headquarters was used by the Hezbollah terror organization to command its activities in the area,” the military said.
Aoun condemned what he called the “ongoing Israeli attacks” on southern Lebanon and “repeated violations of the framework agreement” and international law protecting civilians, according to a statement from his office.
He said the strikes, including the attack in Ansar, amounted to a “clear message on the negotiation process,” but did not explicitly threaten to pull out of them.
The comments came ahead of the next round of US-sponsored talks, expected to take place in Rome early next month.
Israeli officials cautioned Lebanon against using the violence as an excuse to pull out of talks and urged a deeper engagement.
Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, who heads Israel’s negotiating team in the Lebanon talks, said: “If the Lebanese government uses this incident as a pretext to delay or discontinue peace talks, it would hand a tactical victory to the enemies of peace. Derailing the talks is precisely what Hezbollah is trying to achieve.”
Netanyahu spokesman Doron Spielman told AFP that Israel wanted new and more ambitious US-brokered talks with Lebanon following Saturday’s deadly attacks, which he asserted “should jumpstart the talks and make them much more serious, not do the opposite.”
“And I think it will. It will hopefully move these talks along because the enemy here is clear and the enemy is Hezbollah,” Spielman said. “We believe in the agreement. We very much hope that the Lebanese Armed Forces are going to be able to step into the foray, and together we’re going to remove Hezbollah from the picture.”
Israel and Lebanon announced a US-mediated framework agreement on June 26, six days after a precarious truce between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect.
The framework set out a plan for Israeli forces to withdraw from southern Lebanon in exchange for Hezbollah’s disarmament and envisioned steps toward an eventual peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which technically remain in a state of war. Hezbollah was not a party to the agreement and has rejected calls for it to disarm.
Hezbollah said the Israeli strikes would be met with an “appropriate” response, urging authorities to halt “humiliating” negotiations with Israel.
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