Civil defence teams inspect a burned-out car hit by an Israeli drone strike on a road leading to southern Lebanon on September 2, 2024. | Photo credit: AFP
An Israeli airstrike on Monday (September 2, 2024) killed two civilians travelling in a car on Lebanon’s southern coast, including an employee of a cleaning company contracted by the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, security sources said.
The force, UNIFIL, confirmed that a vehicle driven by a sanitation worker was hit by a strike near the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura, killing both the driver and passenger.
UNIFIL spokesperson Candice Ardile said: “UNIFIL regrets that so many people have been injured or killed since 8 October. Attacks on civilians are a violation of international humanitarian law. They must stop.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Security sources said the attack was Israeli and that the two people in the car were cousins. Lebanese armed group Hezbollah later said it had fired Katyusha rockets into Israeli territory in response to the attack near Naqoura.
Nearly 140 civilians have been killed in Israeli bombing of Lebanon since 8 October; hostilities between Israeli forces and Hezbollah began that day parallel to the war in Gaza.
In May, an Israeli attack on a village in southern Lebanon killed a technician who had been contracted by a telecommunications company to fix a phone tower.