Israeli tanks reportedly enter Lebanese border village as residents prohibited from moving south

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Four Israeli tanks have entered the western side of the Lebanese border village of Khiyam, Lebanon’s official news agency said on Friday, following a ceasefire that took effect on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X on Friday that Lebanese residents are prohibited from moving south to a line of villages and their surroundings until further notice

Israel said it opened fire on Thursday toward what it called “suspects” with vehicles arriving at several areas in the southern zone, saying it was a breach of the truce with Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, which came into effect on Wednesday.

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah in turn accused Israel of violating the deal.

“The Israeli enemy is attacking those returning to the border villages,” Fadlallah told reporters, adding “there are violations today by Israel, even in this form.”

The Israeli military also said on Thursday the air force struck a facility used by Hezbollah to store mid-range rockets in southern Lebanon, the first such attack since the ceasefire took effect on Wednesday morning.

In his recent post, Adraee called on Lebanese residents to not return to more than 60 southern villages, saying anyone who moves south of the specified line “puts themselves in danger.”

The Lebanese army earlier accused Israel of violating the ceasefire several times on Wednesday and Thursday.

The exchange of accusations highlighted the fragility of the ceasefire, which was brokered by the United States and France to end the conflict, fought in parallel with the Gaza war. The truce lasts for 60 days in the hope of reaching a permanent cessation of hostilities.

The head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, pledged on Friday to co-ordinate closely with the Lebanese army to implement a ceasefire deal with Israel, which he said his group had agreed to “with heads held high.”

It was his first address since a ceasefire came into effect on Wednesday after more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel that decimated swathes of Lebanon and killed 4,000 people including hundreds of women and children.

Qassem said Hezbollah had “approved the deal, with the resistance strong in the battlefield, and our heads held high with our right to defend (ourselves).”

The ceasefire stipulates that Hezbollah will withdraw from areas south of the Litani river, which runs some 30 km (20 miles) north of the border with Israel, and that the Lebanese army will deploy troops there as Israeli ground troops withdraw.

“There will be high-level co-ordination between the Resistance (Hezbollah) and the Lebanese army to implement the commitments of the deal,” Qassem said.

The Lebanese army has already sent additional troops to the south but is preparing a detailed deployment plan to share with Lebanon’s cabinet, security sources and officials have said.

That effort has been complicated by the continuing presence of Israeli troops on Lebanese territory. The deal grants them a full 60 days to complete their withdrawal.

The Israeli military has issued restrictions on people returning to villages along Lebanon’s border with Israel and has fired at people in those villages in recent days, calling those movements a violation of the truce.

Both the Lebanese army and Hezbollah have accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire in those instances, and by launching an air strike above the Litani River on Thursday.

Qassem said the group had scored a “divine victory” against Israel even greater than that declared after the two foes last fought in 2006.

“To those that were betting that Hezbollah would be weakened, we are sorry, their bets have failed,” he said.

In other news, Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians overnight and on Friday in the Gaza Strip, medics said, as efforts to revive Gaza ceasefire talks received a boost with officials from the Palestinian group Hamas headed to Cairo for a new round of talks.

Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave’s eight long-standing refugee camps.

Later on Friday, an Israeli air strike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, medics said.

Others were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to “strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli tanks had entered northern and western areas of Nuseirat on Thursday. They withdrew from northern areas on Friday but remained active in western parts of the camp. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped in their homes.

Dozens of Palestinians returned on Friday to areas where the army had retreated to check on damage to their homes.

Medics and relatives covered up dead bodies, including of women, that lay on the road with blankets or white shrouds and carried them away on stretchers.

“Forgive me, my wife, forgive me, my Ibtissam, forgive me, my dear,” one grief-stricken man moaned through tears beside her corpse, laid out on a stretcher on the ground.

Medics said an Israeli drone on Friday had killed Ahmed Al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, where the army has been operating since early October.

Contacted by Reuters, the Israeli military said it was unaware of a strike occurring in this location or time frame.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip that barely function now due to shortages of medical, fuel, and food supplies. Most of its medical staff have been detained or expelled by the Israeli army, health officials say.

The Palestinian civil emergency service, Hamas and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA put the number of Palestinians killed in two Israeli strikes in Beit Lahiya in the past 24 hours at 70. There was no immediate confirmation of the figure by the local health ministry.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and accused Israel of “using the weapon of starvation against the people (in northern Gaza) to displace them from their land and homes.”

The Israeli army said forces operating in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia since Oct. 5 aimed to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping and waging attacks from those areas. Residents said the army was depopulating the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun as well as the Jabalia refugee camp.

Late on Friday, two Hamas officials told Reuters a Hamas delegation would arrive in Cairo on Saturday for talks with Egyptian officials. The visit comes days after the U.S. said it would begin new efforts with Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey to revive Gaza ceasefire talks.

Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.

A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.

Announcing the Lebanon accord on Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said he would now renew his push for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza and he urged Israel and Hamas to seize the moment.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,300 people and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.

The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago, triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, Israel has said.