By Harun Nasrullah
London, (The Muslim News): At least eight civilins were killed on Wednesday after Israeli warplanes launched a wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon, in what Lebanese authorities described as continued violations of the ceasefire agreement that came into force on April 17.
Six people died and several others were injured after Israeli strikes targeted a residential building in the town of Tayr Debba, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).
Rescue teams were still searching through the rubble late Wednesday amid fears that more victims remained trapped beneath the collapsed structure.
Two more people were killed in a separate Israeli airstrike on the town of Seddiqin in the Tyre district, while several others were wounded.
The NNA reported that Israeli aircraft also struck the towns of Srifa, Ansariyeh, Bnaafoul, Deir Qanoun al-Nahr, Kfardounine, Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Kfar Rumman throughout the day. Israeli drones were also seen flying over Beirut and its southern suburbs.
An Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle at the western entrance to Deir El Zahrani earlier in the morning, though no immediate casualty figures were released.
Lebanon’s latest casualties add to mounting losses since Israel resumed military operations in the country earlier this year. According to official Lebanese figures, Israeli attacks since March 2 have killed 3,666 people and injured 11,321 others despite the ceasefire agreement.
US and Iran exchange drone and missile attacks
The latest bombardment came amid rapidly widening regional tensions after direct military exchanges between the United States and Iran.
US President Donald Trump issued a series of combative remarks on Wednesday, claiming Iran had “taken too long to negotiate a deal” and warning that Tehran “will have to pay the price.”
“Iran’s Military is a complete and total mess. Much of it, like their Navy and Air Force, doesn’t even exist anymore — They have been completely defeated,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“The Bully of the Middle East is DEAD!!! They’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”
The comments followed confirmation from US Central Command that American fighter jets had struck Iranian air defence systems and radar installations near the Strait of Hormuz after an Iranian drone allegedly downed a US Army Apache helicopter.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responded by announcing retaliatory attacks against 21 American military targets across the region, including US air and naval bases in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
In a statement released early Wednesday, the IRGC said it had “destroyed, with drones and ballistic missiles, four main objectives” belonging to US forces.
The confrontation marked one of the most serious direct clashes between Washington and Tehran in recent years and followed several days of escalating exchanges involving Israel and Iran.
Israeli forces kill three Palestinians
Meanwhile in Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said three more Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll since October 2023 to 72,991.
Five others were injured in the latest strikes.
The ministry said Israeli attacks had continued despite a ceasefire agreement that has technically been in place since October 2025. Since then, repeated violations have killed 981 Palestinians and wounded 3,104 others.
The war has devastated the besieged enclave, with Palestinian officials estimating that around 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been destroyed during Israel’s two-year military campaign.
More than 400 former European political leaders & diplomats call upon EU to impose punitive measures against Israael
International criticism of Israel also intensified on Wednesday after more than 460 former European political leaders and senior diplomats signed a public editorial calling on the European Union to impose punitive measures against Tel Aviv.
The signatories included former Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, former European Parliament President Pat Cox, former Italian prime ministers Massimo d’Alema and Romano Prodi, and former Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven.
“The European Union cannot stand aside,” the group wrote.
“It must now act urgently to implement recommendations such as those repeatedly made since July 2025 in a series of public statements by a group of now over 460 European former ministers, ambassadors and senior officials.”
The former officials urged the EU to suspend Israel’s preferential trade access under the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
“Specifically, the EU must suspend Israel’s preferential trade access under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, thereby impacting one third of Israel’s total trade in goods with the world,” the statement said.
The appeal comes ahead of meetings of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg and an EU summit in Brussels next week, where proposals to curtail trade with Israel are expected to be discussed.
However, Germany rejected calls for additional sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers operating in the occupied West Bank.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin had repeatedly conveyed its opposition to illegal Israeli settlements but did not currently support further punitive measures.
“We have clearly told the Israeli government that we believe this illegal settlement policy should not continue and that projects such as E1, in particular, violate the entire Oslo process,” Wadephul told reporters in Berlin.
“At present, the German government takes the view that our voice is being heard in Israel and that other measures are not warranted at this time,” he added.
Israeli army ordered Palestinians to evacuate in West Bank
Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces ordered residents of the Jabal al-Salihin neighbourhood east of the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem to evacuate their homes on Wednesday to allow the military to conduct exercises in the area.
Residents were instructed to head south and remain away until later in the afternoon, while Israeli troops reportedly ordered families to leave windows open during the operation.
The Israeli army also deployed additional military vehicles and bulldozers into Nur Shams camp, which has remained under heavy siege for months.
Local sources said the camp had suffered extensive destruction during repeated Israeli raids, with hundreds of homes demolished or burned and roads severely damaged.
According to Palestinian figures, at least 1,169 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 2023, while 12,666 others have been injured, around 23,000 arrested and approximately 33,000 displaced.
Separately, a new investigation published Wednesday accused Israeli exporters of disguising products originating from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights as goods produced inside Israel for sale in European markets.
The report, titled Importing Occupation and published by the Global Echo Litigation Center, analysed more than 30,000 export records covering 6,827 agricultural shipments exported between October 2017 and February 2026.
Researchers found that more than 17 percent of agricultural shipments sent to Europe contained products originating in Israeli settlements, while the figure rose to nearly 20 percent for exports specifically bound for EU member states.
“Retailers and food manufacturers responsible for labelling their products are involved in consumer deception by falsely labelling the origin of agricultural settlement goods exported to the EU,” the report said.
The investigation alleged that exporters routinely concealed the true origins of settlement goods by using Israeli addresses unrelated to production sites or by mixing settlement products with goods produced within internationally recognised Israeli territory before export.
As fighting spreads across multiple fronts and diplomatic pressure grows internationally, fears continue to mount that the region is moving towards a broader and more dangerous confrontation.
[Photo: People gather around a vehicle targeted in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Sidon, Lebanon on June 10, 2026. Israeli forces carried out airstrikes on areas in southern Lebanon despite the ceasefire, with a vehicle targeted in Sidon. Photojournalist: Mohammad Abushama/AA]
