A high-ranking official in the office of the Lebanese president told the India BBC News that Lebanon will only take part in direct talks with Israel next week if there is a ceasefire first.
It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to direct talks after the Lebanese government made “repeated requests.”
A US State Department official said that next week in Washington, DC, there would be a meeting to talk about the two countries’ ongoing ceasefire talks.
The Israeli air strikes on Lebanon are still going on, and the Lebanese health ministry says that the death toll from Wednesday’s huge wave of bombing has risen to 357, with 1,223 people hurt.The ministry said that the toll is still not final because they are still removing rubble and there are a lot of human remains that need DNA testing.
The Israeli army said that the attacks all over the country had killed “at least 180 Hezbollah terrorists.”
Joseph Aoun, the President of Lebanon, said on Friday that strikes on the southern city of Nabatieh had killed 13 state security personnel. He also condemned the attacks that were still going on.
The Lebanese government said that the latest Israeli attacks killed seven people from the same family in the town of Abbassieh and 11 people in Zrarieh. A medical center in Burj Qalaway was also hit, killing two people. A drone strike hit an ambulance in Toul, but no one was hurt.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it hit about 10 rocket launchers on Thursday night that had fired at northern Israel. It said it was still looking for and destroying more.
Hezbollah has also fired more rockets at different parts of Israel, and they did so overnight, setting off sirens all over the country. The IDF said that one rocket was fired at the southern coastal city of Ashdod, which is the farthest Hezbollah has attacked in the current fighting. However, it was stopped.
The group said it fired rockets at Kiryat Shmona, which is near the border between Israel and Lebanon, and Misgav Am in the Upper Galilee region of northern Israel at 10:00 a.m. (06:00 a.m. BST) on Friday. There have been no reports of deaths.
It said it was acting because it thought Israel had “broken” the US-Iran ceasefire agreement.
But there is a lot of disagreement about whether Lebanon was part of the US-Iran ceasefire that US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday.
Pakistan, which helped make the truce happen, and Iran say it was, but the US and Israel say it wasn’t. On Thursday, Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, told the India BBC News that Israeli attacks on Lebanon were a “grave violation” of the ceasefire.
But US Vice President JD Vance said in Budapest on Wednesday, “I think the Iranians thought the ceasefire included Lebanon, but it didn’t.”
Benjamin Netanyahu told people in northern Israel on Thursday night that there was “no ceasefire in Lebanon.”
He went on to say, “After the Lebanese government asked us several times to start peace talks with them, I told the cabinet last night to start direct talks with Lebanon in order to achieve two goals: One—disarming Hezbollah. And the second was a long-lasting and historic peace deal between Israel and Lebanon.
In the past, Lebanon and Israel have only talked to each other through third parties, so direct talks between the two countries would be very rare. Since the ceasefire agreement in November 2024, there have been ongoing efforts to start negotiations. US diplomats have already helped the two sides talk to each other indirectly.
After the heaviest Israeli air strikes since the fighting began, rescue teams in Beirut are still finding bodies.
The family of Mohammad Hamoud owns a pharmacy in the Ain el Mreisseh neighborhood of Beirut. He was at work in another part of town, which was also being bombed by Israel, when he heard that the pharmacy building had been hit.Mohammad told the India BBC News , “You can’t control what happened, the number of bombs.” “In a very, very short time, everything was completely broken. It was amazing.
At the same time, UN aid groups are warning that the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is getting worse, with more than a million people forced to leave their homes and food prices going up.
The World Food Program (WFP) said that a food security crisis was happening because incomes were falling and prices were rising.
Before the most recent conflict, WFP was helping thousands of families. Now, they want to help even more. But it says that delivering supplies, especially to southern Lebanon, is getting harder and harder. Convoys can take up to 15 hours to travel even short distances.
