BEIRUT (AP) — The death toll in the latest round of fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon surpassed 3,000, Lebanon’s health ministry said Monday.
The ministry said the toll is now 3,020 killed in the Israeli strikes, including 292 women and 211 children. Fighting began on March 2 with the Hezbollah militant group firing at Israel, two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. Attacks from both sides have not stopped despite a fragile ceasefire.
Israel has since invaded southern Lebanon and bombarded the capital, Beirut, and other areas, saying it is targeting Hezbollah efforts to rearm. Hezbollah, also a powerful political entity in Lebanon, has resisted pressure, including by the Lebanese government, to disarm.
More than a million people have been displaced in Lebanon by the fighting, with some sheltering in tents along roads and the sea in Beirut. Israel, meanwhile, has struggled to halt frequent Hezbollah drone attacks targeting both their troops on Lebanese soil and in northern Israeli border towns.
Israeli strikes on Lebanon have continued daily, even after groundbreaking ongoing talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington produced a ceasefire that began on April 17 and has been extended into June. Israeli troops remain in large swaths of southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah, however, is not part of the talks and has opposed them. The group, instead, backs its key ally Iran in its own talks with the United States mediated by Pakistan.
The neighbors have been officially in a state of war since Israel was created in 1948.
Negotiations press on despite fighting
Israeli military Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adaree called on residents in several towns near the southern coastal city of Tyre on Monday to evacuate ahead of airstrikes. Meanwhile, the militant Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said one of its officials was killed in an Israeli strike on his house at midnight alongside his daughter in the city of Baalbek near the Syrian border.
Israeli officials have focused on disarming Hezbollah and described the negotiations as a precursor to a potential normalization of diplomatic relations.
Lebanese officials have said they seek a security agreement or armistice that would stop short of normalization, focusing on Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon, while maintaining their commitment to disarming the Iran-backed group.
Despite the ongoing attacks, the two sides agreed Friday to extend the ceasefire by 45 days and announced that military delegations will take part in direct talks of their own on May 29.
U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly called for a meeting between Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Aoun has declined to go to Washington to meet or speak directly with Netanyahu at this stage — a move that would likely generate blowback in Lebanon, where talks with Israel were met with protests.
Twenty Israeli soldiers, two Israeli civilians inside Israel and a defense contractor working in southern Lebanon have been killed on the Israeli side since the latest fighting started.
U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon have also been caught in the crossfire and six have been killed.
