NABATIEH: Lebanese school children on a minibus had a narrow escape Thursday when a drone strike killed a Hezbollah fighter in the car ahead, blowing out the windscreen of their vehicle and wounding three pupils. The injured children were hospitalized with cuts from flying glass after the aerial attack, which state media and a source close to Hezbollah blamed on the Zionist entity.

“At first, we didn’t understand what was happening, and there was panic among the children,” said Ahmad Qubaisi, 57, who was driving the bus with 18 children on board. “Suddenly a strike hit the car in front of us” near the town of Nabatiyeh, about 13 kilometers (eight miles) from (the Zionist) border, he said. “The bus’ windshield shattered... I backed up and that’s when the second strike hit the car” in front of him, Qubaisi added. The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that the Zionist entity was behind the strike, which killed a Hezbollah member who was named as Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran.

The attack was the latest in months of violence that has upended lives on both sides of the Lebanon- Zionist frontier as the Zionist entity-Hamas war has raged in Gaza. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has traded near daily cross-border fire with the Zionist entity since the October 7 attack

At the site of Thursday’s strike, an AFP photographer saw the charred car and blood stains on the road. Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported “an enemy drone attack in the morning on the Kfardjal-Nabatiyeh road”. The attack “killed a car driver” and “wounded three pupils” who were in a bus heading to school, it said. One of the children, 11-year-old Mohammed Nasser, was lying on a bed in the Nabatiyeh government hospital, a bandage on his bruised forehead.

“The glass shattered... and the car in front of us was burning,” the boy recalled. Fearing more strikes, he said, “we put our schoolbags on our heads”. Standing beside him, his aunt showed AFP his blood-stained school uniform. The boy’s father, Ali Nasser, said that “I was working in my field when my brother-in-law called telling me my son had been injured”. — AFP