DIBBINE, Lebanon (AP) — Lebanon’s president and prime minister criticized Iran on Friday for opposing the latest ceasefire deal between the Lebanese government and Israel, saying their country should not be used by Tehran as a “bargaining chip” in its talks with Washington.
The comments came as the Israeli military struck multiple parts of southern Lebanon and issued evacuation warnings for nine villages, including one that has sheltered thousands of people displaced by the three-month war between Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. The strikes killed nine people in six locations in southern Lebanon, the state news agency reported.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard issued a statement Thursday vowing that “there will be no calm in the region” if Israel doesn’t withdraw its troops from Lebanon. In an interview with CNN, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun responded: “It’s not your job to interfere into our country. I reject the statement totally because our people (are) being killed, our houses being destroyed.”
In separate remarks, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called on the Lebanese people to put their country’s interest first, saying that Lebanon “should not remain a battlefield for others.”
Both he and Aoun complained that Iran was treating their nation as “a bargaining chip” in talks with Washington about ending the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce should extend to Lebanon.
Some Lebanese return to ruined villages
Even as new evacuation warnings forced hundreds of Lebanese families to flee from some areas, people elsewhere began returning to their homes to survey the aftermath of fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah. The militant group has rejected the ceasefire deal and demands a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
An Associated Press team traveling in southern Lebanon Friday saw multiple villages in ruins, including Dibbine, near Marjayoun town, from which Israeli troops withdrew a day earlier. It was the first time Israeli troops exited an area in southern Lebanon since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war began in early March.
U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops were at an entrance to Dibbine, clearing rubble and opening roads. The Lebanese army set up barbed wire at one of the entrances, preventing some residents from returning.
At least one family arrived to search the rubble of its home along the road leading to the village, while the owner of a petrol station in Dibbine looked at his destroyed property and called village residents to report on the destruction he saw from behind the barbed wire.
Shrapnel and pieces of missiles were seen in the wreckage of homes lining the road into Dibbine. Israeli troops entered the village weeks ago for the first time and were engaged in heavy clashes with Hezbollah fighters in the area. The troops returned this week, before withdrawing Thursday.
The road to Dibbine was dotted with villages entirely emptied of residents and destroyed by Israeli strikes, including Khiam. But no Israeli troops were visible from the road.
Nearby Christian villages were largely untouched, and many of their residents decided to stay. The strategic Beaufort castle, recently captured by Israel, appeared in the distance, with a flag of the Israeli Golani Brigade. Smoke from strikes around the nearby Nabatiyeh city billowed above.
New evacuation warnings and strikes
The Israeli military issued a new set of evacuation warnings on Friday, prompting people to leave the village of Anqoun and the area of Aarnaya, on the edge of the predominantly Christian community of Maghdoucheh, near the southern port city of Sidon.
Nearly three hours after the warning, Israeli warplanes struck Lebanese villages, including Anqoun. About 2,500 people displaced by the fighting were sheltering in Anqoun, the Lebanese news agency NNA reported.
Israel had warned Lebanese residents against returning to villages in the south, saying the area is still a combat zone.
The U.S. brokered the ceasefire agreement Wednesday in Washington. The deal sought to pull Lebanon away from Iran with a statement that any agreement to cease hostilities must be reached directly through Lebanon and Israel “and not through any separate track.”
Aoun said Hezbollah should understand that negotiations and diplomacy are the only way “to save what’s left” of Lebanon. Its government accuses Hezbollah of dragging the country into war and had made efforts to disarm the group before the latest hostilities.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally who has been acting as a mediator on behalf of the group, echoed the militants’ demands for a broad Israeli withdrawal. In his first comments since the agreement was announced, Berri said the ceasefire should be “complete and comprehensive,” without any exceptions for land, sea or air, and “without bulldozing and demolishing everything that exists.”
Israeli troops have seized around a fifth of Lebanon, pushing further into the country’s south than at any time since the end of Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began. The fighting has killed at least 29 Israeli soldiers and three civilians.
The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded, one severely, in an encounter Friday with militants in southern Lebanon, where another officer was severely wounded Thursday by a suspicious aerial object or projectile.
US forces board tanker linked to Iran
The war in Lebanon threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a globally important conduit for oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other commodities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, wants to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until Hezbollah no longer poses a threat.
In Iran-related developments, the U.S. military said Friday that its forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker linked to the Islamic Republic in the Indian Ocean.
U.S. forces around the world have sought to prevent Iran from profiting off its oil and other goods. They have been directed to stop ships tied to Tehran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government.
The U.S. Navy has imposed a blockade of Iran’s ports as part of an effort to force Tehran to open the strait and accept a deal to extend a tenuous ceasefire in the war.
The U.S. also targeted Iran’s energy sector Friday with new sanctions on a group of people, firms and tankers. The Treasury Department said they were associated with exporting Iranian-origin liquid petroleum gas disguised as an Omani product to customers in South and East Asia.
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Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Ben Finley and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.
