{"id":511262,"date":"2026-06-26T00:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T00:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511262\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T00:13:08","slug":"israel-kills-three-in-lebanon-as-rubio-praises-progress-in-washington-talks-israel-attacks-lebanon-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/511262\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel kills three in Lebanon as Rubio praises progress in Washington talks | Israel attacks Lebanon News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued<\/a> despite a ceasefire, with three people killed in a strike on a car in the south of the country, as senior Israeli and Lebanese officials meet for a final day of talks in Washington.<\/p>\n

According to Lebanon\u2019s Ministry of Public Health, three people were killed on Thursday, and one was wounded after the Israeli attack hit a car on the road between Zawtar and Mayfadoun in Nabatieh Governorate.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

According to Lebanon\u2019s National News Agency (NNA), Israeli forces also burned a number of houses in the town of Ain Arab, after issuing warnings forcing residents to evacuate the town before 5pm on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The health ministry said that since the conflict began on March 2 , 4,230 people have been killed in Lebanon and 12,179 others have been wounded.<\/p>\n

The Israeli army said on Thursday that it had killed several alleged Hezbollah members around the so-called \u201csecurity zone\u201d in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

The military explained that in the first incident, its soldiers \u201cidentified five Hezbollah terrorists who posed a threat to them\u201d in Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, while in the second, they \u201cidentified an armed Hezbollah terrorist\u201d around the Ali al-Taher Ridge.<\/p>\n

Reporting from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera\u2019s Zeina Khodr said the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remains \u201cfragile\u201d as the Israeli army continues to target \u201canyone or anything in front-line villages\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c[These are] villages on the outskirts [of the] city of Nabatieh, which lie along the area which is under Israel\u2019s occupation,\u201d Khodr explained. \u201cSo the message is they don\u2019t want people to approach that area, there\u2019ve been drone strikes, they\u2019ve dropped stun grenades \u2026 people killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose villages, the Israeli army was not able to occupy them during weeks of fighting and it wants to still be able to control them by fire because the more territory you control, the more leverage you have in negotiations<\/a>,\u201d she said, adding that officials from Lebanon and Israel are discussing the possible and gradual handover of territory.<\/p>\n

Ceasefire talks<\/p>\n

Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a United States-backed proposal for the past three days, with the talks wrapping up in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The negotiations have been focused on Israeli forces handing over some of the territory they occupied during the fighting with Hezbollah to Lebanon\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

A US State Department official told the Reuters news agency that Israel had taken a \u201cconcrete step\u201d towards the proposal, which had been part of the latest round of talks, by pulling back from a part of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

However, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer also told reporters on Thursday that Israel \u201cwill not withdraw our forces from southern Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remains a threat, is not disarmed and demilitarised.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about ongoing Israel-Lebanon talks, Mencer said: \u201cWe are making extremely clear that our responsibility is to our northern citizens and to the whole of Israel, and we will not allow any terrorist force anywhere near our border \u2013 which means that any redeployment of forces comes after, not before, but after the demilitarisation of southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hezbollah\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, also said on Thursday that Israel opposed withdrawing from the \u201csecurity zone\u201d in Lebanon, adding the military would remain in what he called \u201csecurity zones\u201d \u2060\u2060in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza for as long as necessary.<\/p>\n

Moreover, a senior Lebanese military official also told Reuters that developments on the ground in recent days had shown the \u201copposite of a pullback\u201d.<\/p>\n

Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon were making good progress towards a \u201ccommitment of intent\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we are very close in our hopes of getting a commitment of intent between the two countries,\u201d Rubio told reporters during a visit to Bahrain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be a process, it\u2019ll take some time, it\u2019ll take a lot of work, but I can tell you that for the first time in 30 years, the sovereign government of Lebanon is speaking to the government of Israel directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

A joint statement from the US and Gulf nations on Thursday also supported the ongoing Israel-Lebanon talks and said those negotiations should not be conditional on the outcomes of other conflicts, adding that all non-state armed groups should be disarmed.<\/p>\n

Under US pressure, Lebanese officials began direct talks in April with Israel in Washington.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah, however, has condemned the Lebanon-Israel talks, demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon first.<\/p>\n

Post-UNIFIL \u2018coalition\u2019<\/p>\n

Separately on Thursday, France and Italy announced plans to establish a multinational coalition to replace the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to launch a coalition for the post-UNIFIL arrangement, obviously in coordination with the European Union and the United Nations, to strengthen Lebanon\u2019s sovereignty and that of its armed forces,\u201d French President Emmanuel Macron said after talks with Italy\u2019s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the town of Antibes on the French Riviera.<\/p>\n

He added that the new force would help prevent Lebanon\u2019s territory from becoming \u201ca foothold for regional escalation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last August, the UN Security Council, under pressure from the US, decided to end UNIFIL\u2019s mandate on December 31, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued despite a ceasefire, with three people killed in a strike on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,46,48084,88,47,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-511262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-israel","tag-israel-attacks-lebanon","tag-lebanon","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}