Fighting flared anew along the Israel-Lebanon border on Sunday after Hezbollah launched two explosive drones toward Israeli troops operating near the strategic Ali Taher Ridge, an area the IDF says it recently cleared of Hezbollah's underground infrastructure. Israeli soldiers shot down one of the drones, and the military said no troops were injured in the attack. In response, Israel carried out a wave of strikes across southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah operatives, weapons storage sites, and structures the IDF says were being used to plan future attacks. Among the targets was a Hezbollah command center the military says had been established inside a former hospital, where it claims artillery and surveillance operatives had recently been active.

Before one of the strikes, on the town of Arab Salim, the IDF issued a warning telling residents to move at least 300 meters away from a building it had identified as Hezbollah infrastructure. Despite the warning, Lebanese health authorities reported that the strikes killed four people and wounded twenty others across the affected areas, with two people killed in Nabatieh al-Fawqa and two women killed in nearby Arab Salim. Images from the scene showed smoke rising over Arab Salim as residents gathered near the site of the strike, with some carrying away the body of a person killed in the attack. The IDF described the targeted site as "strategic infrastructure that was built over two decades" and said it had been financed and planned with Iranian backing.

The Israeli military characterized Hezbollah's drone attack as a "blatant violation" of the ceasefire agreement that has governed the fragile calm along the border, and said its strikes were carried out in direct response. This exchange follows a similar incident just one day earlier, when Israeli strikes on five locations across the Tyre, Nabatieh, and Beqaa Valley regions killed at least three more people and wounded 23 others, also in response to a Hezbollah drone launch. In that earlier incident, Lebanon's state news agency reported that two young men were killed while riding a motorcycle near the Ali Taher Ridge, the same area now at the center of Sunday's fighting.

The escalation comes just days after Israel announced it had completed what it called the capture of Hezbollah's main underground stronghold at Ali al-Taher Ridge, a tunnel complex located roughly ten miles from the Israeli border that the IDF has described as Hezbollah's "nerve center" in southern Lebanon. Defense Minister Israel Katz called the operation "an important step" toward disarming Hezbollah and said Israeli forces would not withdraw from the security zone in southern Lebanon until that broader goal is achieved. Hezbollah has not publicly commented on the IDF's claim of capturing the site, but the renewed drone attacks and Israeli counterstrikes suggest that despite Israel's territorial gains, the group retains both the capability and the intent to continue targeting Israeli forces along the border, keeping the ceasefire under mounting strain.