Sidon:

The Lebanese army said an Israeli strike on a vehicle near a checkpoint in the southern city of Sidon on Thursday killed three people and wounded troops and UN peacekeepers.

“The Israeli enemy targeted a car as it passed through the Awali checkpoint,” said the main army, the northern entrance to Sidon.

Except for a few limited strikes, Sidon, a Sunni Muslim-majority city, has been relatively spared from the deadly airstrikes targeting southern Lebanon in Israel’s war against the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.

The strike killed three people, all passengers in the targeted vehicle, the military said.

According to the army, three Lebanese soldiers manning the checkpoint were also wounded along with members of the Malaysian UNIFIL contingent.

The UNIFIL peacekeeping force said “a convoy bringing newly arrived soldiers to southern Lebanon was passing Sidon when a drone strike took place nearby.”

“Five peacekeepers were slightly injured and treated by the Lebanese Red Cross at the scene. They will continue in their posts,” it said, urging the warring parties “to avoid actions that endanger peacekeepers or civilians.”

UNIFIL has thousands of peacekeeping troops

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said a UNIFIL vehicle was in the “same lane” during the strike, which left UN peacekeepers with “minor injuries”.

An AFP correspondent in the area saw the charred and damaged remains of the targeted vehicle, which was just meters away from an army checkpoint.

The correspondent saw UNIFIL peacekeepers gathered on the pavement near the checkpoint, some of them bloodied and injured from the raid, while paramedics attended to their wounds.

The UNIFIL convoy included a number of buses, the correspondent said.

Israeli raids have intensified in recent weeks in Haret Saida, a densely populated suburb of Sidon that has a significant Shia Muslim population.

Israel has increasingly launched targeted attacks on vehicles. A woman was killed Thursday in an Israeli attack that targeted a car on a key road linking the capital Beirut to the Bekaa Valley and Syria, a security source told AFP.

Lebanon’s National News Agency earlier reported that “an enemy drone targeted a car in Araya,” adding that the strike left the route blocked for vehicular traffic.

The highway connects Beirut to the Syrian capital Damascus through the Lebanese mountains.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)