Israel says it struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites in Syria, testing a fragile ceasefire

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah weapons smuggling sites along Syria's border with Lebanon, the Israeli military said Saturday, testing a fragile, days-old ceasefire that halted months of fighting between the sides but has seen continued sporadic fire.

The military said it struck sites that had been used to smuggle weapons from Syria to Lebanon after the ceasefire took effect, which the military said was a violation of its terms. There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities or activists monitoring the conflict in that country. Hezbollah also did not immediately comment. Israeli aircraft have struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, citing ceasefire violations, several times since the truce began on Wednesday.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah does not address the war in Gaza, where fighting rages on. On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a car killed five people, according to Muneer Alboursh, a senior Palestinian health official, who said the toll included three employees of the food charity World Central Kitchen. The charity could not immediately be reached for comment and made no mention of the incident on its social media.

The Israeli military said it struck a vehicle carrying a militant involved in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. It said it was looking into the reported ties to WCK, but said the car was unmarked and had not coordinated aid delivery with the military as charities have done during the war.

At Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, a woman held up an employee badge bearing the WCK logo, the word “contractor” and the name of one of the men said to have been killed in the strike. A heap of belongings — burned phones, a watch and stickers with the WCK logo — lay splayed on the hospital floor.

An Israeli strike in April on a WCK convoy killed seven of its workers, most of them foreigners. The Israeli military said it was a mistake.

The Israeli strike in Syria came as insurgents there breached the country's largest city, Aleppo, in a shock offensive that added fresh uncertainty to a region reeling from multiple wars.

The truce between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah, brokered by the United States and France, calls for an initial two-month ceasefire in which the militants are to withdraw north of Lebanon's Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border.

The repeated bursts of violence — with no reports of serious casualties — reflected the uneasy nature of the ceasefire that otherwise appeared to hold. While Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire, Lebanon has also accused Israel of the same in the days since it took effect.

Many Lebanese, some of the 1.2 million displaced in the conflict, were streaming south to their homes, despite warnings by the Israeli and Lebanese militaries to stay away from certain areas.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone attacked a car in the southern village of Majdal Zoun. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said three people were wounded, including a 7-year-old child. Majdal Zoun, near the Mediterranean Sea, is close to where Israeli troops still have a presence.

The military said earlier Saturday that its forces, who remain in southern Lebanon until they withdraw gradually over the 60-day period, had been operating to distance “suspects” in the region, without elaborating, and said troops had located and seized weapons found hidden in a mosque.

Israel says it reserves the right under the ceasefire to strike against any perceived violations. Israel has made returning the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis home the goal of the war with Hezbollah but Israelis, concerned Hezbollah was not deterred and could still attack northern communities, have been apprehensive about returning home.

Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its assault on southern Israel the day before. Israel and Hezbollah kept up a low-level conflict of cross-border fire for nearly a year, until Israel escalated its fight with a sophisticated attack that detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah fighters. It followed that up with an intense aerial bombardment campaign against Hezbollah assets, killing many of its top leaders including longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, and it launched a ground invasion in early October.

More than 3,760 people have been killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas' October 2023 attack, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians and took some 250 hostage. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say more than half the dead were women and children.

Mroue reported from Beirut and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Teacher Ahmed Awada inspects his school that was damaged by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Displaced residents drive past destroyed buildings as they return to Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Displaced residents drive past destroyed buildings as they return to Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Displaced residents drive past destroyed buildings as they return to Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Hezbollah supporters cheer as they return to Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Displaced residents return to Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Displaced residents celebrate as they return to their villages following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that went into effect on Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Ablah, eastern Lebanon. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

DUBLIN (AP) — Vote counting was underway Saturday in Ireland’s national election after an exit poll suggested the contest is a close-fought race among the country’s three largest political parties.

Ballot boxes were opened at 9 a.m. at count centers across the country, kicking off long hours, or even days, of tallying the results. If the exit poll is borne out, that could be followed by days or weeks of negotiations to form a coalition government.

The exit poll suggested voters’ support is split widely among the three big parties — Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein — as well as several smaller parties and an assortment of independents ranging from the left to the far right.

The poll said center-right party Fine Gael was the first choice of 21% of voters, and another center-right party, Fianna Fail, of 19.5%. The two parties governed in coalition before the election. Left-of-center opposition party Sinn Fein was at 21.1% in the poll.

Pollster Ipsos B&A asked 5,018 voters across the country how they had cast their ballots. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

The figures only give an indication and don’t reveal which parties will form the next government. Ireland uses a complex system of proportional representation in which each of the country’s 43 constituencies elects several lawmakers and voters rank candidates in order of preference. As a result, it can take some time for full results to be known.

Fianna Fail politician Michael McGrath, a former finance minister and now a European Union official, said “a number of different parties and groups will have to be involved” in forming a government.

“I hope it is a stable government that has the prospect of lasting the five years because of the challenges we are facing in Ireland and throughout the European Union," he told the PA news agency at a count in Cork, southwest Ireland. “Let’s allow the picture to emerge over the days ahead.”

The result will show whether Ireland bucks the global trend of incumbents being ousted by disgruntled voters after years of pandemic, international instability and cost-of-living pressures.

The cost of living — especially Ireland’s acute housing crisis — was a dominant topic in the three-week campaign, alongside immigration, which has become an emotive and challenging issue in a country of 5.4 million people long defined by emigration.

The outgoing government was led by the two parties that have dominated Irish politics for the past century: Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. They have similar policies but are longtime rivals with origins on opposing sides of Ireland’s 1920s civil war. After the 2020 election ended in a virtual dead heat, they formed a coalition.

Before polling day, analysts said the most likely outcome was another Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition. That remains a likely option, but the parties would need the support of smaller groups or independents to achieve a majority in the 174-seat Dail, the lower house of Parliament.

Sinn Fein achieved a stunning breakthrough in the 2020 election, topping the popular vote, but was shut out of government because Fianna Fail and Fine Gael refused to work with it, citing its leftist policies and historic ties with militant group the Irish Republican Army during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Though Sinn Fein, which aims to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent Republic of Ireland, could become the largest party in the Dail, it may struggle to get enough coalition partners to form a government. During the election campaign, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail maintained they would not go into government with it.

The party, which had urged people to vote for change, hailed the result after the exit poll was released.

“There is every chance that Sinn Fein will emerge from these elections as the largest political party,” Sinn Fein director of elections Matt Carthy told broadcaster RTE on Friday night.

Lawless reported from London.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Minister for Defence and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin arrives to cast his vote at St Anthony's Boys' School, Beechwood Park, Ballinlough, Cork, as voters go to the polls for the 2024 General Election in Ireland, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (Jacob King/PA via AP)

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, center, speaks to the media outside Government Buildings, on the last day of campaigning on the eve of the General Election, in Dublin, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP)

Irish Prime Minister and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris speaks to the media after casting his vote at Delgany National School, County Wicklow, as voters go to the polls for the 2024 General Election in Ireland, Friday Nov. 29, 2024. (Niall Carson/PA via AP)

A man casts his vote at a polling station on the Island of Gola as voters go to polls the for the 2024 General Election in Ireland, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

A man casts his vote in a ballot box on the Island of Gola as voters go to polls the for the 2024 General Election in Ireland, Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)