Hezbollah MP slams planned Lebanese talks with Israel as strikes kill 10

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah on Saturday reiterated his group's rejection of direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, where authorities reported 10 people killed in Israeli attacks in the south.

The office of President Joseph Aoun said on Friday that officials from Lebanon, Israel and the United States would meet next week in Washington "to discuss declaring a ceasefire and the start date for negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under U.S. auspices."

Beirut is seeking the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanese territory, while Israel has framed the talks as a step towards formally establishing peace with Lebanon, with which it has technically been at war for decades.

Aoun had repeatedly expressed readiness for direct talks ever since Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war on March 2 with rocket fire at Israel in support of its backer Iran, sparking massive Israeli strikes and a ground invasion.

In the coastal city of Sidon, meanwhile, hundreds of people attended a funeral procession on Saturday for 13 State Security personnel who were killed the day before in Israeli strikes that hit their office in Nabatiyeh in the south.

Loved ones grasped at the coffins, each bearing the Lebanese flag, while others wept inconsolably.

"Who will bring my husband back? Who will give my children their father back?" screamed the wife of one of the dead.

Addressing the authorities, another angry, grief-stricken mourner said: "You left them there to die, and now you're holding ceremonies for them?"

- 'Domestic tensions' -

Hezbollah MP Fadlallah said the decision to hold direct talks with Israel was "a blatant violation of the (National) Pact, the constitution and Lebanese laws".

The move "exacerbates domestic divisions at a time when Lebanon most needs solidarity and internal unity to face Israel's aggression and preserve civil peace", he added in a statement.

He went on to say the government "has failed to protect its people and cannot be trusted to safeguard national sovereignty".

Israeli ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter has said Israel "agreed to begin formal peace negotiations" with the Lebanese government, but "refused to discuss a ceasefire with the Hezbollah".

Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, said on X that Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam "should know that ignoring the unique role of the resistance and the heroic Hezbollah will expose Lebanon to irreparable security risks".

"Lebanon's stability rests exclusively on cohesion between the government and the resistance," he said.

- 'Civil peace' -

Lebanon's health ministry said 10 people were killed by Israeli strikes in the south on Saturday, with state media reporting Israeli raids on more than a dozen locations.

The ministry said the dead included a member of the Lebanese civil defense and two paramedics from the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee, decrying Israel's "systematic" targeting of emergency workers.

Authorities say more than 1,950 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war erupted.

After a ceasefire was announced between the United States and Iran this week, the two sides have been at odds over whether it also applies to Lebanon, where Israel has kept up heavy strikes and Hezbollah has responded with its own attacks.

On Friday, dozens of Hezbollah supporters, some brandishing the group's flag or that of Iran, demonstrated outside the government headquarters and in other parts of Beirut.

The Lebanese Army on Saturday warned against "any action that could endanger stability or civil peace" and said its forces would "intervene firmly to prevent any harm to internal stability".