World

Six Injured in Israeli Drone Strike on Lebanese Border Near Syria

By Al Jazeera Staff

An Israeli drone strike on Friday wounded six people in Lebanon’s Hermel district, close to the Syrian border, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said the six injured included five Syrian nationals—two of them women—and one Lebanese. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the drone targeted a car. The area has largely been spared such attacks since an Israel‑Hezbollah ceasefire was agreed in June. Israel’s military said it struck a Syrian terrorist who it claimed was operating under the direction of the Iranian regime and had planned attacks against Israeli forces in southern Syria. Since the ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al‑Assad in December 2024, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against Syria, sent troops into a UN‑patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan since 1974, and conducted repeated incursions deeper into Syrian territory, sometimes seizing residents. Israel has also continued to attack Lebanon since the ceasefire with Hezbollah was agreed in June, and has vowed to keep troops in so‑called security zones along its border in both Syria and Lebanon. Syria’s President Ahmed al‑Sharaa told the UN General Assembly last month that Israel had carried out “500 air strikes, more than 1,200 incursions and 300 detentions” in Syria, and called for Israeli withdrawal from Syrian territory and for the international community to commit to a 1974 agreement that created a UN‑supervised separation zone between Israeli and Syrian forces.