Hezbollah reports fresh clashes as Raad says no need for direct negotiations
Hezbollah said its fighters were engaged in fresh clashes with the Israeli military on Thursday, hours after Lebanese state media reported that Israeli strikes in the south killed three people.
The fighting came a day after the United States and Iran signed an agreement to end the Middle East war on all fronts, including in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group, said on Thursday it was fighting "a force of the Israeli enemy army that attempted to advance from the town of Arnoun towards the outskirts of Kfar Tibnit", near the key town of Nabatieh.
"The clashes are still ongoing," it added in the statement released in the late afternoon.
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in March by attacking Israel to avenge the killing of Iran's supreme leader at the start of the US-Israeli campaign.
Israel retaliated with broad strikes across Lebanon and by launching a ground invasion in the south, which borders Israel and has long been under Hezbollah's sway.
The hostilities have continued despite the US-Iran agreement.
Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported on Thursday that "an enemy drone targeted a car" in the Kfar Tibnit area, killing two people.
In the neighboring village of Zebdine, another drone killed one more person, NNA said.
Israel's military, meanwhile, announced the death of one of its soldiers the night before in an incident in south Lebanon that also left seven others wounded.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said that peacekeepers in Lebanon had also reported exchanges of fire on Thursday.
"So far today, 143 trajectories of projectiles were observed. Of these, 119 were attributed to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with the remainder to Hezbollah," Dujarric said at a daily briefing.
"Yesterday, 364 projectile launches were observed, of which 330 were attributed to the IDF and 34 to Hezbollah."
- Israeli offensive -
In an earlier statement, Hezbollah said on Thursday that its fighters had repelled a four-day Israeli offensive towards the Ali al-Taher hills and Kfar Tibnit.
The Ali al-Taher hills are a strategic height overlooking Nabatieh and are believed to hold important Hezbollah military infrastructure.
Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli troops and tanks with drones, rockets and artillery, forcing them to retreat "under the cover of smoke screens and artillery fire during the night".
Also on Thursday, the head of Hezbollah's parliamentary bloc, Mohammad Raad, said that Israel's war in Lebanon had "failed" to eliminate the group.
He also called on Lebanese authorities to "adopt a framework for indirect negotiations with the enemy" to stop the fighting.
He said the Israeli military must "fully comply with the cessation of hostilities on land, at sea and in the air, and prepare for and begin withdrawal within 60 days, without any need whatsoever for direct negotiations".
The Israeli military, however, said on Thursday that it would continue to operate in southern Lebanon even after the United States and Iran signed their agreement.
The military also published a map of its so-called security zone -- which runs some 10 kilometers (six miles) inside Lebanese territory and includes the area where Hezbollah said it had confronted the Israeli offensive.
It said troops would remain there "to remove threats and strengthen the defence of Israel's northern residents".
In a later statement, an Israeli military official said the army would also "continue to remove threats to IDF soldiers and the civilians of the State of Israel that are identified beyond the security zone".
Source: Agence France Presse
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