Israel kills three in Lebanon as Rubio praises progress in Washington talks 

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have continued despite a ceasefire, with three people killed during a strike on a car in the south of the country, as senior Israeli and Lebanese officials meet for a final day of talks in Washington.

According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA), three people were killed on Thursday, and one was wounded after the Israeli attack hit a car on the road between Zawtar and Mayfadoun in Nabatieh Governorate.

NNA also reported that Israeli forces burned a number of houses in the town of Ain Arab, after issuing warnings forcing residents to evacuate the town before 5pm on Wednesday.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, since the conflict began on March 2, 4,230 people have been killed and 12,179 others have been wounded.

Reporting from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah remains “fragile” as the Israeli army continues to target “anyone or anything in front-line villages”.

“[These are ] villages on the outskirts [of the] city of Nabatieh, which lie along the area which is under Israel’s occupation,” Khodr explained. “So the message is they don’t want people to approach that area, there’ve been drone strikes, they’ve dropped stun grenades … people killed.

“Those villages, the Israeli army was not able to occupy them during weeks of fighting and it wants to still be able to control them by fire because the more territory you control, the more leverage you have in negotiations,” she said, adding that officials from Lebanon and Israel are discussing the possible and gradual handover of territory.

Israel and Lebanon have been discussing a United States-backed proposal for the past three days, with the talks wrapping up in Washington, DC, on Thursday. The negotiations have been focused on Israeli forces handing over some of the territory they occupied during the fighting with Hezbollah to Lebanon’s military.

A US State Department official told the Reuters news agency that Israel had taken a “concrete step” towards the proposal, which had been part of the latest round of talks, by pulling back from a part of a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

However, a senior Israeli defence official denied that there had been any pullback, adding that Israel would not be withdrawing from its buffer zone.

Moreover, a senior Lebanese military official also told Reuters that developments on the ground in recent days had shown the “opposite of a pullback”.

Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that Israel and Lebanon were making good progress towards a “commitment of intent”.

“I think we are very close in our hopes of getting a commitment of intent between the two countries,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Bahrain.

“It’ll be a process, it’ll take some time, it’ll take a lot of work, but I can tell you that for the first time in 30 years, the sovereign government of Lebanon is speaking to the government of Israel directly.”

Under US pressure, Lebanese officials began direct talks in April with Israel in Washington.

Hezbollah, however, has condemned the Lebanon-Israel talks, demanding the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon first.