JERUSALEM (VINnews) Israeli troops launched an attack on Sunday to seize the key town of Bint Jbel in south Lebanon from Hezbollah terrorists who are besieged there, pressing the war on the Iran-backed group on the eve of rare talks between Israeli and Lebanese government envoys.

A clip released on Monday shows a Hezbollah terrorist hiding his face as a drone explodes on him.

Israeli drone finishes off a Hezbollah terrorist.

I’m watching this on repeat.pic.twitter.com/uQwXC1N8bl

— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) April 13, 2026

With the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States set to meet on Tuesday in Washington, Lebanon’s foreign minister said Beirut would use face-to-face negotiations to press for a ceasefire in the war, which has complicated wider diplomacy to halt the conflict in the Middle East.

But the outlook for the meeting, an unusual, face-to-face encounter between countries formally in a state of war, is uncertain. Israel has said it won’t discuss a ceasefire while Hezbollah has objected to negotiations with Israel, reflecting sharply worsening political tensions in Lebanon.

On the ground ‌in south Lebanon, ‌the Israeli military completed its encirclement of the  Bint Jbeil just over the border ‌and ⁠had begun a ⁠ground assault there, an Israeli military spokesperson and Lebanese security sources said. IDF troops discovered significant military infrastructure and weapons in a local hospital, which Hezbollah had used as a command center.

The Lebanese sources said Hezbollah terrorists holed up inside were ready to fight to the death, citing the strategic and symbolic significance of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, provincial capital, and gateway to surrounding villages. In 2006 Israel failed to secure the town, where Hassan Nasrallah had taunted Israel’s weakness after the withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000.

An Israeli military official said full operational control of Bint Jbeil would be achieved within days, and that only a small number of terrorists remained in the area.

On Sunday, Hezbollah said it had attacked Israeli forces in and around Bint Jbeil with rockets, artillery fire and suicide drones. One strike hit a Red Cross center where a volunteer died from ⁠their injuries, the Red Cross said. Israel’s military later said a Hezbollah rocket struck the northern ‌Israeli city of Nahariyya.

The country’s fire service said it hit a three-storey ‌residential building, while the ambulance service said a woman was lightly injured by glass shattered in the blast.

The IDF also said that ‌it had intercepted more than 10 drones and rockets launched at Israel from Lebanon since the morning.

A foreign security official ‌based in Lebanon said seizing Bint Jbeil would give Israel better control over the entirety of Lebanon’s southeastern border strip, leaving just the western area of the border zone, which is largely forest and harder to clear.