Israel strikes southern Lebanon despite Trump’s effort to shore up ceasefire

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon. Photograph: Adri Salido/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon. Photograph: Adri Salido/Getty Images Israel strikes southern Lebanon despite Trump’s effort to shore up ceasefire Warplanes carry out dozens of airstrikes and Israeli army issues evacuation warning for city of Nabatiyeh Israeli warplanes have launched dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon despite a new agreement supposedly brokered by Donald Trump aiming to bolster the tattered ceasefire in Lebanon. The US president said on Monday that he had stopped an imminent Israeli strike on Beirut and that he had spoken to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and representatives of Hezbollah and both agreed that “all shooting will stop”. But on Tuesday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported 30 Israeli strikes across the south. Near the city of Sidon, rescuers recovered the bodies of six members of the same family, including two children and a woman, after an Israeli strike. The Israeli military also issued a new evacuation warning for the southern city of Nabatiyeh before new strikes, accusing the “Hezbollah terror organisation” of violating the ceasefire. A deal to reduce or stop levels of violence between Israel and Hezbollah, a militant Islamist movement with close links to Tehran, would support Washington’s efforts to reach a new ceasefire agreement with Iran. View image in fullscreen A Lebanese man drives his car that was damaged in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock Trump on Tuesday denied reports from semi-official news agencies in Iran that Tehran had paused negotiations until Israel stopped its offensive in Lebanon. “The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today,” he said in a social media post. Hezbollah has not claimed any recent strikes in Israel, saying instead it attacked Israeli troops who have pushed into Lebanon to establish a security zone between 5 and 10 kilometres wide. The Guardian view on Trump and Lebanon: civilians need lasting peace, not short-term patches | Editorial Read more The Israeli military said on Tuesday it intercepted two projectiles fired overnight from Lebanon towards the northern city of Safed, while a drone struck a military position in western Galilee, close to the border with Lebanon, the Times of Israel newspaper reported . No injuries were reported. This most recent round of conflict in Lebanon began when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel on 2 Marchin retaliation for its killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a wave of airstrikes carried out on the first day of the US-Israeli offensive against Iran. In recent days there has been a dramatic intensification in fighting and