Israeli Strikes Kill in Lebanon and Gaza as the Ceasefire Frays Further

The violence that the Gaza ceasefire was supposed to end continues to claim lives across two fronts, with fresh Israeli strikes killing in southern Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip.

In Lebanon, the national news agency reported that two men were killed in an Israeli drone strike in Nabatieh. It followed a strike earlier in the week that killed four people, among them Esperanza Ghandour, a public school principal, and her mother — deaths that landed hard in a country where the line between combatant and civilian is drawn by others, from the air.

In Gaza, health officials say at least nine Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire in a 24-hour period. Among the dead was Ahmad Nasser Saleem, a driver delivering food for World Central Kitchen, the US-based nonprofit whose aid workers have been killed in the enclave before. The killing of humanitarian staff has become one of the war's most damning recurring features.

These deaths accumulate inside a ceasefire that formally still exists. Gaza's authorities have documented thousands of violations since the US-brokered agreement was signed, with more than a thousand people killed in the period — a truce whose text holds while its substance dissolves. The political scaffolding meant to follow it, from a Palestinian technocratic administration to an international security force, has not materialised.

The regional context is deteriorating rather than improving, with the United States and Iran trading strikes and the wider war reigniting. For civilians in Nabatieh and in Gaza's tent camps, the distinction between war and ceasefire has become academic — the drones arrive either way.