Israel launched airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring more than a dozen others in what marked one of the deadliest attacks since a ceasefire took effect in June. The strikes hit the town of Tibnin — where a man was killed when a prayer hall at a local cemetery was struck — as well as the nearby town of Mansouri, where several buildings were damaged and families fled toward Tyre, the largest city in Lebanon's south. The Israeli military said it was carrying out "precise strikes" in response to what it called a "blatant violation of the ceasefire" by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group, though it provided no specific details. It issued an evacuation order roughly 30 minutes before striking Mansouri — the first such order since 14 June, when residents of 29 towns and villages were told to flee.

The escalation also followed the deaths of two Israeli soldiers killed by a booby-trapped building during a reconnaissance sweep of the southern Lebanese town of Majdal. Four other soldiers were wounded in the blast, according to Israeli media. An Israeli military source separately said that displaced residents had returned to Mansouri "under the auspices of the Lebanese army, which established a checkpoint in violation of agreements," and that military activity endangering civilians was taking place inside the Israeli-declared security zone — a roughly 10-kilometre strip of occupied Lebanese territory along the border.

The strikes came as Israeli and Lebanese delegations gathered in Rome for a second day of US-sponsored indirect talks, the seventh such round aimed at cementing a more durable end to the conflict. A framework agreed in late June envisions a gradual Israeli military withdrawal from occupied Lebanese territory in exchange for the disarmament of Hezbollah. Progress has been slow: so far, the two sides have established only three "pilot zones" where the Lebanese army has assumed control after Israeli troops pulled back. Hezbollah has rejected the framework, saying provisions tying Israel's withdrawal to the group's disarmament crossed "all red lines."

The broader context remains stark. The current phase of the conflict began on 2 March, when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for a strike that killed Iran's supreme leader — drawing Lebanon into a wider regional war. Since then, at least 4,333 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 392 women and 253 children, according to Lebanon's health ministry. A further 353 of those deaths occurred after the June ceasefire. Israel has also continued large-scale demolitions in areas it occupies, including a controlled blast last week using 700 tonnes of explosives near Beaufort Castle, outside the southern city of Nabatieh, which human rights groups say may constitute the war crime of wanton destruction. Meanwhile, the UN estimates that some 360,000 people remain displaced across Lebanon, even as more than 820,000 have begun returning to their home areas since hostilities eased.