Israel’s military said Monday that four of its soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.
A military statement said the soldiers were all from the same brigade, but it did not specify when they were killed or the circumstances of their deaths.
The development comes nearly two weeks after Israel and the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah began a cease-fire.
The agreement, which calls for both sides to pull back from southern Lebanon, has brought a sharp reduction in fighting, but has not eliminated violence in the area.
Lebanon’s military said Monday an Israeli airstrike hit a car near an army checkpoint in southern Lebanon, killing one person and wounding four soldiers.
The Lebanese military is not a party to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and along with the United Nations is supposed to monitor a buffer zone between the warring sides as part of the ceasefire agreement.
Hezbollah launched attacks against Israel in October 2023 in solidarity with its ally, the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip, following the Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people.
Israel and Hezbollah traded cross-border attacks for months, with the conflict intensifying in September and Israeli troops entering Lebanon in October.
The ceasefire has allowed Israeli troops to refocus on Gaza, where health officials said Monday Israeli airstrikes killed at least six people.
Israeli officials also said Monday that a drone believed to have originated in Yemen hit a residential building in the central Israeli city of Yavne. There were no reported injuries, authorities said.
The Yemen-based Houthi militant group has launched multiple attacks against Israel during the past year, and it has carried out a campaign targeting ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, all part of what the Iran-backed group says are actions in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 44,700 Palestinians, more than half of the verified deaths women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Israel says that the death toll includes thousands of militants it has killed.
Hamas and Hezbollah have been designated as terror groups by the United States, United Kingdom and other Western countries.
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
