Master Sgt. (res.) Alexander Filin, 29, was killed near the Litani River at about 5pm on Thursday 18 June when a Hezbollah roadside bomb struck his unit in south Lebanon1. Seven others were wounded, among them the deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)'s 36th Division, a colonel, and a lieutenant colonel. The IDF answered with artillery on Hezbollah positions.
Hezbollah is the Iran-backed Shia militia that has held south Lebanon as a military front against Israel since the 2006 war; the Litani has marked the rough edge of IDF operations there ever since. This is the first time the conflict has produced a death since the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the 14-point US-Iran deal whose Article 1 demands an immediate cessation "on all fronts, including in Lebanon."
Israel never signed the MOU, and Israeli defence minister Katz had ruled the IDF's stay in its south Lebanon zone unlimited, so the cessation clause the attack breaks was contested before it broke. Hezbollah had been firing on IDF positions since 15 June, an exchange Tehran used to invoke a violation clause. Filin's death turns that running friction into a fatality on the front the deal's signatories could not control.
