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Beirut strikes and toll
Israel carried out airstrikes on Beirut’s Dahieh district on Sunday, after Hezbollah fired toward Israeli territory, with the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the attack was in retaliation for an earlier Hezbollah strike on Israel.
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Lebanon’s Beirut Health Ministry reported that the overall toll of Israeli attacks in Lebanon has risen to 3,637 dead and 11,188 wounded since 2 March, as raids hit several locations in the south including Tyre and Kharayeb.
In Tyre, the Lebanese Red Cross said four paramedics sustained medium to minor injuries after an attack in front of its headquarters, with the injuries caused by shattered glass following the explosion.
The same Reuters report said a drone targeted, with two missiles, a car in the city of Tyre, killing one person and wounding another, and earlier an Israeli raid hit the town of Kharayeb in the district of Sidon, leaving one person dead and several wounded.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told CNN that Lebanonis currently negotiating a non-aggression agreement with Israel, while reiterating that he will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before an agreement is reached to end the war.
Trump, EU and Iranian threats
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas urged calm after Iran and Israel traded strikes, saying “Overnight, we have seen escalation again,” and adding “I think the region does not need an escalation, but actually that parties sit down to a negotiation table and agree.”
U.S. President Donald Trump said he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back after Iran fired a salvo of missiles at Israeli targets, telling Axios: “Israel had its strike and Iran had its strike. We don't need another one.”
NPR reported that Netanyahu said Israel’s military is “completing the elimination of the terrorist villages adjacent to our border,” while also quoting him saying “We are striking them very hard, and we know that Hezbollah is on the run.”
In Beirut, Iran’s hardline parliament national security committee spokesperson Ebrahim Rezaei wrote on X that Iran would deliver a “decisive and painful response” to Israel’s attack on Dahieh, adding “Look to the skies of the occupied territories tonight.”
NPR also quoted a U.S. foreign policy expert, Brian Katulis, saying “These ceasefires between Israel and Hezbollah essentially have been quite tenuous, and they've been broken almost on a daily basis over the last few weeks,” as he described the strikes as a “tit for tat escalation.”
What’s at stake next
The conflict’s immediate stakes in Lebanon were framed through the risk of further escalation after Israel struck Dahieh, with the Jerusalem Post saying the attack followed Hezbollah’s decision to ignore the ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump on June 1.
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The Jerusalem Post reported that an Israeli source said that, under the understandings underlying the joint Israel and US-Lebanon ceasefire agreement announced on June 4, “a Hezbollah attack on Israeli civilian territory would entitle Israel to respond by striking the terror group in Dahiyeh.”
In parallel, the Il Sole 24 ORE report said Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun told CNN that negotiations for a non-aggression agreement with Israel are underway, but that he would not meet Netanyahu before an agreement is reached to end the war.
The Guardian described how the Iran war and fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon threaten to drag the region back into war, quoting Kaja Kallas’s call for parties to “sit down to a negotiation table and agree.”
NPR added that between March 2 and June 4 of this year, more than 3,500 women, men, and children were killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, which said more than 10,000 Lebanese people had also been wounded during that time period.
