Israel Kills 8 in Southern Lebanon a Day After Trump Declared 'All Shooting Will Stop'

At least eight people were killed in Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Tuesday, just one day after President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to halt their fighting — a de-escalation that neither side has publicly accepted and that the violence on the ground swiftly contradicted.

Israeli drone strikes hit targets across the Nabatieh governorate, killing a father along with his son and daughter, according to Lebanese authorities. Two Syrian nationals were killed in a strike on a plant nursery in the town of Jebchit. Other drone strikes hit a motorcycle on Martyr Sabra Street in the town of Toul and a car in the Dhi'at al-Arab neighborhood of Ansar, each killing more people, as the death toll mounted through the day.

The strikes came less than 24 hours after Trump, speaking after a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that "there will be no troops going to Beirut, and any troops that are on their way have already been turned back." Trump also said he had spoken with Hezbollah representatives and that they had agreed "all shooting will stop — that Israel will not attack them, and they will not attack Israel."

The reality on the ground undercut that announcement. The fresh Israeli barrage followed what the Israeli military had described as one of its heaviest days of incoming fire from Lebanon since an April ceasefire, and it landed even as Israel threatened new strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold. Neither the Israeli government nor Hezbollah confirmed the agreement Trump described.

The escalation rippled directly into the broader regional crisis. Iran announced it was suspending its indirect negotiations with the United States to protest Israel's expanding military offensive in Lebanon, a setback for the diplomatic track Trump has touted as proceeding at a "rapid pace" even amid the ongoing Iran war. Tehran has warned that the intensifying assault could derail any path to a wider settlement.

The pattern has become grimly familiar since the April ceasefire, which has been punctured repeatedly by Israeli strikes that the military says target Hezbollah operatives and weapons movements, and by rocket and mortar fire from Lebanese territory. Lebanon's government has accused Israel of violating the truce with near-daily attacks, while Israeli officials insist they are acting to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its arsenal. Each exchange has chipped away at the credibility of outside efforts to enforce a halt to the fighting.

The bloodshed in Lebanon underscored the fragility of Trump's ceasefire diplomacy at a moment of acute danger across the Middle East, with the war involving Iran still raging and humanitarian conditions deteriorating. For families in the border towns of Nabatieh, the president's assurances that the shooting would stop offered little protection as the drones returned overhead.