The Lebanese army is reported to have detained several individuals allegedly involved in firing rockets at Israel in late March, an incident that triggered a wave of Israeli air strikes across southern Lebanon. According to a statement issued by the Lebanese military yesterday, the arrests followed a series of raids in various parts of the country and included the seizure of a vehicle and equipment reportedly used in the attacks.
The state-run National News Agency reported that Lebanese army intelligence chief General Rodolph Haikal briefed the cabinet today regarding the developments.
Read Israeli army to remain in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria ‘indefinitely,’ says defence minister
According to reporting from the Associated Press, security officials indicated that four of those being questioned are Palestinian nationals allegedly linked to Hamas. However, a Hamas official cited in the Washington Post denied the group’s involvement in the rocket fire. The official acknowledged that some members of Hamas had recently been detained by Lebanese authorities but said they were released shortly afterward, and that one arrest involved an individual carrying an unlicensed pistol, unrelated to any rocket fire. “They were not involved in firing rockets into Israel,” the official stated.
Hezbollah, which began launching attacks against Israel in October 2023 following the start of the genocide in Gaza, also denied responsibility for the March attacks. Since that time, Israel has conducted near-daily air strikes in Lebanon, killing dozens of civilians as well as members of Hezbollah, despite the US-brokered ceasefire.
Read UN human rights office concerned about Israeli air strikes on civilians in Lebanon
On Tuesday, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said that at least 71 civilians, including 14 women and nine children, have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the ceasefire officially took effect. Lebanon’s Information Minister Paul Morcos said today that Israel had violated the ceasefire 2,740 times, resulting in 190 deaths and 485 injuries on Lebanese soil.
The renewed rocket fire and subsequent detentions come amid Israel’s broader campaign of military escalation across the Middle East. In response to the massacre in Gaza – which up until now has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children – groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen launched missiles at Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity and resistance. Both groups have explicitly stated that they would halt their attacks if Israel ended its military aggression in Gaza.
Rather than de-escalate, Israel has widened the conflict by conducting air strikes not only in Lebanon and Yemen but also in Syria and Iran. Analysts say this is part of a regional strategy aimed at quelling all opposition to Israeli expansionism in the region, which human rights experts and genocide scholars increasingly describe as a campaign of ethnic cleansing.