Damage following the Israeli strike on the city's water company in Sour, southern Lebanon. (Credit: Photo provided by our correspondent)
Israeli airstrikes targeted the southern Lebanese city of Sour on Monday, destroying the city's Water Office, cutting off its water supply and killing two local officials, according to L'Orient Today's correspondent.
Rescue workers from the Scouts al-Rissala civil defense force, affiliated with the Amal movement, retrieved the victims' remains from the rubble of the Water Office. The victims of the Israeli attack were identified as Samer Chaghari, a mukhtar (a local elected official who handles residents’ administrative affairs) and director of the al-Afaq Technical and Vocational Education Institute, and Qassem Wehbi, the deputy mayor of Burj al-Shemali.
Qassem Wehbi (L) and Samer Chaghari (R). (Credit: Photo provided by L'Orient Today's correspondent)
In response to the water outage, the municipality urged remaining residents to ration their water consumption until alternative solutions could be arranged.
The strike highlights the broader toll of the ongoing war. Since the start of the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel on Oct. 8, which followed the eruption of war in Gaza, at least 30 water facilities in southern Lebanon have been damaged by Israeli strikes, impacting over 360,000 people. UNICEF spokesperson Jean-Jacques Simon told L’Orient-Le Jour in late December that many affected areas remain inaccessible, leaving the full scale of infrastructure damage unknown.
Multiple Israeli strikes also targeted Sour in the morning, notably bombing Burj al-Shemali and a Lebanese Army barracks.
Nabatieh and southern Lebanese villages bombed
Since Sunday evening, Israeli airstrikes killed several rescue workers from the Islamic Health Committee. The bodies of two rescue workers were retrieved from under the rubble of a building in Baraasheet (Bint Jbeil). Also, six rescue workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike at their center in Houmine al-Tahta.
In Nabatieh, Israeli strikes targeted residential areas, with a strike near the government hospital killing one person and injuring several others. Earlier in the day, a house in Nabatieh al-Fawqa was bombed, killing at least two individuals.
Israeli aircraft also pounded dozens of villages in southern Lebanon, including Qana (Sour district), which was also hit by a drone strike. Israeli cluster bombs targeted the banks of the Litani River, near Blat, in the Marjayoun district.
In the Bekaa Valley, a child, Ali Mohammed Kassem Wehbeh, succumbed to injuries sustained in an Israeli strike in Baalbeck’s Beit Bou Esber area, reported our correspondent.
Israeli advances in Khiam, Hezbollah attacks
On the ground, the Israeli military continued its attempts to advance its ground offensive on Khiam (Marjayoun), a village roughly five kilometers from the Blue Line. Fierce fighting ensued overnight, with Hezbollah claiming to have repelled multiple Israeli attempted advances into the area. The Israeli army had previously tried to seize Khiam at the end of October without success.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for several attacks on soldiers, military positions, barracks and towns in northern Israel, including one carried out with exploding drones against a group of Israeli soldiers in the new Western Brigade Command headquarters in Ya'ara barracks, as well as others on Shraga, north of Acre, Gornot HaGalil and Kiryat Shmona. So far, the party has claimed 14 attacks.
No Israeli strike in Beirut's southern suburbs, cease-fire updates
These developments come at a time when, for the first time since last Tuesday, the Israeli air force has not carried out any daytime strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, which have been bombarded at regular intervals day and night since the beginning of last week.
They also come against a backdrop of progress in cease-fire talks. U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein was expected to arrive in Beirut Tuesday, however, "pending clarifications about the Lebanese position regarding the cease-fire agreement," Hochstein has reportedly postponed his visit
In the context of the pending agreement, caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati reported a "positive response" from Lebanon — and therefore from Hezbollah — to the proposed agreement submitted last Wednesday by the United States to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Mikati did, however, mention several points that still need to be discussed "face-to-face."
