A precarious calm reigned on the border in southern Lebanon on Friday morning as the temporary truce took effect in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Traffic was disrupted in the southern area as large numbers of citizens, who had fled their homes due to the Israeli attacks, rushed back to their villages to inspect their properties.
“A precarious calm reigned on the southern border, with the humanitarian truce in Gaza coming into effect at 7:00 in the morning (5:00 GMT),” Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.
A resident in the Alma al-Shaab border region also said that the situation was calm and that he could no longer hear Israeli planes or reconnaissance drones flying overhead.
This calm follows a surge in violence on Thursday, coinciding with the impending truce between Israel and Hamas. Israeli bombardments, followed by loud explosions, targeted the center of the Marjayoun plain and the area around the Odaisseh police station, leaving one Internal Security Force member wounded.
However, despite the calm, some tensions persist. Earlier this morning, Israeli forces dropped illuminating bombs over several border towns, including Aita al-Shaab and Ramya in the western sector of southern Lebanon.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah said on Friday that it had carried out 22 attacks on Israeli positions from southern Lebanon, where it lost seven of its fighters during the day.
The cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have claimed 109 lives in Lebanon. At least 77 of them are Hezbollah fighters, and 14 are civilians, according to an AFP count.
Among those killed were three journalists, the son of the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, and an official from Hamas’s military wing in Lebanon.
