Lebanon's war toll passes 3,000 as Sudan's siege lines move

Lebanon's health ministry said on May 18 that the death toll in the war had passed 3,000. At least 3,020 people had been killed and 9,273 wounded since the war began on March 2. Hezbollah said the same day that it had shot down an Israeli military aircraft over Ayta al-Jabal in southern Lebanon.

The strikes did not stop. On May 19 Israeli airstrikes killed 19 people and injured 34 in the Nabatieh and Tyre districts. The next day at least eight people were killed in strikes on Ad-Doueir, Tibnin, Burj el-Shamali, and Shebaa. A separate accounting said Israel had seized about 1,000 square kilometers across Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, roughly 5 percent of Israel's land area in equivalent size.

On May 22 six people were killed and six injured in an Israeli strike in Deir Qanoun an-Naher, including two paramedics among the dead. A paramedic was killed and four more people were injured in two further strikes in Tyre district. Israeli drone strikes also killed two people in Rafah and Gaza City that day.

By May 23 Lebanese Civil Defense said an Israeli strike on a residential building in Sir el Gharbiyeh had killed at least 11 people and injured six. The daily counts sat on top of the ministry's cumulative toll rather than replacing it. Each new strike added names to a war that negotiators elsewhere were trying to pause through the Iran talks.

In Sudan, the Sudanese Armed Forces broke the siege of Dilling in South Kordofan for a third time on May 18. It was also reported that the Rapid Support Forces had released commander Abu Lulu, who had been arrested the previous year after videos showed him executing and massacring civilians in El Fasher. He was said to be back in combat after that release.

The Kordofan campaign stayed lethal. The Sudanese Emergency Lawyers said 28 people were killed in a drone strike on a market in West Kordofan. The Sudan Doctors Network said a later drone strike in Dilling, blamed on the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, injured six people. In Nairobi, political groups including the Somoud alliance and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdul Wahid al-Nur approved a roadmap aimed at ending the civil war.