BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli strike Monday in southern Lebanon killed two people in a car, including a contract worker for the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission near the border.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the two people were killed in an Israeli strike on a car in the southern coastal town of Naqoura, but did not give further details. The U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, said one of the victims was an employee at a cleaning company contracted with the agency.
“The contractor’s employee and another individual in the car, who we understand was visiting from abroad, were killed,” UNIFIL spokesperson Kandice Ardiel said, adding that, “attacks on civilians are violations of international humanitarian law.”
Photos and videos circulated on social media showed a charred vehicle on the side of a road.
It was not clear why the car was targeted. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which normally announces when one of its members is killed, did not claim either of the men killed in Naqoura as a member.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident. It has been exchanging fire near-daily with Hezbollah since clashes along the border began last October. Hezbollah began firing rockets over the border on Oct. 8, a day after the outbreak of the war in Gaza sparked by the deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel.
Hezbollah maintains that it will stop firing once a cease-fire agreement is reached to end Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Tensions in recent months have boiled, sparking global fear of the exchanges spiraling into all-out war. UN and international governments for months have urged an end to the fighting.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a draw.
Since Oct. 8, almost 600 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including more than 100 civilians and noncombatants.
In northern Israel, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed by strikes from Lebanon.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border.
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