IDF strike targets Islamic Jihad operatives in Lebanon; 4 reported killed

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday evening said that it carried out an airstrike targeting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group in eastern Lebanon, close to the Syrian border.

Lebanon’s state-run media reported that the strike targeting a car in the town of Majdal Anjar killed four people.

An Israeli drone “targeted a car on the Lebanese-Syrian border,” the National News Agency said, adding that “four bodies” were inside the vehicle.

Lebanon’s health ministry confirmed the toll in a statement.

Majdal Anjar is located in Lebanon’s eastern Beqaa Valley, on a road leading from Damascus to Beirut, some 40 kilometers (nearly 25 miles) north of Israel’s border.

No further details on the strike were immediately provided by the IDF.

While Israel regularly launches strikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah operatives and infrastructure, attacks on the allied Gaza Strip-based Islamic Jihad are rarer.

Islamic Jihad — which has a significant presence in both Lebanon and Syria — carried out the October 7, 2023, terror onslaught alongside Hamas from the Gaza Strip, and was involved in numerous attacks on Israel from Lebanon alongside Hezbollah.

فيديو للسيارة المستهدفة بغارة إسرائيلية قرب بلدة مجدل عنجر بالبقاع#لبنان pic.twitter.com/pEPjWJHyLL

— Sawt Beirut International (@SawtBeirut) February 15, 2026

According to IDF assessments, some 2,400 members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force and another 500 Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists — trained by Radwan — had been waiting in southern Lebanon villages to attack Israel in the days after Hamas carried out its October 7, 2023, mass invasion from Gaza.

Israel has consistently targeted what it says are Hezbollah attempts to rebuild its force following a November 2024 ceasefire that ended a year of conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group. This appeared to be the first strike Israel has claimed in Lebanon against Islamic Jihad since the truce’s onset.

In a separate incident, on Monday morning, the IDF said it killed a Hezbollah operative involved in restoring the terror group’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.

The operative was targeted in a drone strike in the town of Hanin.

The IDF said the operative’s activities were a violation of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon.

استهداف سيارة في بلدة حانين pic.twitter.com/pykQfPCCiA

— Lebanon 24 (@Lebanon24) February 16, 2026

Late Saturday night, the IDF said a wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon targeted Hezbollah weapon depots and rocket launchers.

The IDF, in a statement, said that Hezbollah has continued to attempt to rebuild its infrastructure in southern Lebanon, and that the presence of the arms caches and rocket launchers was a violation of the ceasefire.

The US-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah came after two months of open conflict in Lebanon, including an IDF ground operation in the country’s south in a bid to enable the safe return of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by the terror group’s near-daily attacks. The attacks began on October 8, 2023 — a day after Hamas, also backed by Iran, invaded southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza.

The ceasefire required both Israel and Hezbollah to vacate southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese armed forces. Israel has withdrawn from all but five strategic posts along the border.

Since the ceasefire, the IDF said it has killed over 400 Hezbollah operatives and members of allied terror groups in strikes, hit hundreds of Hezbollah sites, and conducted over 1,200 raids and other small operations in southern Lebanon.

Weakened by the war and still facing regular Israeli strikes, Hezbollah is under internal and international pressure to hand over its weapons, with the Lebanese army having drawn up a plan to disarm it. The Lebanese army said last month that it had completed the disarmament mission south of the Litani River, in the area closest to Israel.

As part of the Lebanese government’s disarmament push, some Palestinian factions in Lebanon handed over weapons in several refugee camps last year to the Lebanese authorities.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have not announced plans to disarm in Lebanon.

AFP and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.