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Israel says it struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria-Lebanon border

Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said Saturday, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that has seen continued sporadic fire.

The military said it struck sites that had been used to smuggle weapons from Syria into Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or Hezbollah.

Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, citing ceasefire violations, several times since the truce began on Wednesday.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah does not address the war in Gaza, where fighting rages on.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a car killed five people, including three employees of the food charity World Central Kitchen, in Khan Yunis, Gaza, according to Muneer Alboursh, a senior Palestinian health office. The charity could not be reached for comment and made no mention of the incident on its social media.

Israeli army targets the vehicle of the international aid organization World Central Kitchen in Khan Yunis
A view of the destroyed vehicle following the Israeli army targeted the vehicle carrying aid workers of the U.S.-based international aid organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) in an attack on Salah ad-Din Street in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 30, 2024.

Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images


The Israeli military said it struck a vehicle carrying a militant involved in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack. It said it was looking into the reported ties to World Central Kitchen but said the car was unmarked and had not coordinated aid delivery with the military as charities have done during the war.

An eyewitness told CBS News that when two rescue workers came to recover the bodies, they were killed in a second strike. Among the dead was Azem Abu Daqa, who is said to have run one of the charity’s kitchens.

Israeli army targets the vehicle of the international aid organization World Central Kitchen in Khan Yunis
The Israeli army targeted the vehicle carrying aid workers of the U.S.-based international aid organization World Central Kitchen in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 30, 2024.

Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images


At Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of one of the men said to have been killed in the strike. A heap of belongings — burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo — lay splayed on the hospital floor.

This is the second time World Central Kitchen has been hit in an Israeli strike. In April, a strike on a convoy killed seven staff members, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military said it was a mistake.

The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of Lebanon’s Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.

The repeated bursts of violence — with no reports of serious casualties — reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise appeared to hold. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has also accused Israel of the same in the days since it took effect.

Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, were streaming south to their homes, despite warnings by the Israeli and Lebanese militaries to stay away from certain areas.

APTOPIX Lebanon Israel
Displaced residents return to Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024.

Bilal Hussein / AP


The military said earlier Saturday that its forces, who remain in southern Lebanon until they withdraw gradually over the 60-day period, had been operating to distance “suspects” in the region, without elaborating, and said troops had located and seized weapons found hidden in a mosque.

Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to strike against any perceived violations.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its assault on southern Israel the day before. Israel and Hezbollah kept up a low-level conflict of cross-border fire for nearly a year, until Israel escalated its fight with a sophisticated attack that detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters.

More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’ October 2023 attack, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians and took some 250 hostages. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say more than half the dead were women and children.

Debora Patta

contributed to this report.

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