Lebanese state media and local authorities reported that two men were killed in the Bint Jbeil district on Sunday during the annual olive harvest. One man died in the village of Froun after a munition left behind by recent fighting exploded, while the other was killed in Yater by Israeli shelling that “targeted the outskirts of the town while he was inspecting his land and olive harvest,” the official National News Agency (NNA) said.
The Lebanese army blamed Israeli tank fire and described the attacks as “a flagrant breach of existing agreements.”
The Yater municipality urged residents “to avoid the outskirts of the town and refrain from crossing the earthen barrier separating some unsafe neighbourhoods” for fear of Israeli attacks.
In Froun, the NNA reported that “a foreign object” left over from previous Israeli operations exploded and killed the man, who was an engineer, as he and others tended their trees. The engineer had come down from Beirut, where he lives, for the harvest, Froun mayor Hassan Bazzi told AFP. The incident prompted local residents to call off the harvest and wait for “the Lebanese army to complete the decontamination of the village,” Bazzi said.
Since an agreement between Lebanon and Israel was struck in June, violence in the south has lessened, but not stopped. Lebanon was pulled into conflict on March 2, when Hezbollah struck Israel in support of Tehran during the US-Israel war on Iran. Subsequently, Israel launched a bombing campaign and a ground invasion that authorities say have killed more than 4,300.
In August, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam accused Israel of intentionally targeting homes and civilian infrastructure across the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded nearly 350,000 internally displaced people in late August, a sign of the worsening displacement crisis.