Israeli airstrikes hit neighborhoods across Lebanon, killing at least 25 people, officials said on Wednesday (October 16, 2024), including more than a dozen in a southern city where Israeli forces have been involved in previous clashes. The bombing is recorded in local memory.
Elsewhere in the south, the mayor of a city was among the dead in an attack that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting to coordinate relief efforts.
The Israeli military said they were targeting a Hezbollah commander in strikes late Tuesday (October 15, 2024) on the southern city of Qana, where 15 people were killed. associated Press Photos and video from the scene showed several buildings leveled and the upper floors of others collapsed. Rescue workers carried away the remains of the dead and used bulldozers to clear debris as they searched for more victims.
Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, the Hezbollah commander in charge of the Qana region.
In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a UN compound in Qana containing hundreds of displaced people killed at least 100 civilians and injured several people, including four UN peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli attack on a residential building killed about three dozen people, a third of whom were children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.
“Kana always gets its share,” said Mayor Mohammad Krasht. APReferring to the city’s grim history.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s acting prime minister, Najib Mikati, accused Israel of “deliberately targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyah, where six people were killed.
“What solution can be expected in light of this reality?” he asked in a statement.
Attacks continued across Lebanon, including the eastern Bekaa Valley and Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities in civilian areas. Hezbollah fired more than 90 shells toward Israel on Wednesday (October 16, 2024), injuring four civilians, according to Israel Rescue Services.
Israel resumed its attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, targeting a weapons warehouse beneath an apartment building, without providing evidence. The military warned residents to evacuate before the attack, and there were no reports of any casualties.
During an assessment of the situation in Israel’s north on Wednesday (October 16, 2024), Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Galant said that Israel was gathering intelligence from capturing Hezbollah militants that would significantly weaken Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks. Had been. “We will negotiate under fire, I said it on day one, I said it in Gaza, I said it here – this is our tool,” he told troops operating in southern Lebanon.
The attacks on southern Beirut came after Mikati said the United States had assured him that Israel would curb its attacks on the capital.
Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, which is also a residential and commercial area where large numbers of civilians and people unaffiliated with the terrorist group live.
The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on social media platform X ahead of the attack in Beirut. One associated Press The photographer observed three air strikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the notice.
In Nabatiyah, more than half a dozen attacks hit the city and surrounding areas, killing at least six people and wounding 43, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with rescue efforts still underway. Provincial governor Huvaida Turk said the city’s mayor, Ahmed Cahil, was among those killed. associated Press,
In his statement regarding Nabatieh, Mr. Mikati, the acting prime minister, said the international community has been “deliberately silent” about Israeli attacks that have killed civilians.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, described reports of Khalil’s death as “alarming”.
“The attack follows other incidents targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure across Lebanon,” he said.
Following Hamas’s surprise attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
A year of low-level fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border escalated into a full-scale war last month and Israel invaded Lebanon in early October. Israeli air strikes have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders, and Israel has vowed to continue its offensive until its citizens can safely return to communities near the border.
Nearly 2,300 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon since last October, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, more than three-quarters of them in the past month. The fighting has displaced approximately 1.2 million people in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, which have expanded their range and become more intense in the past month, have driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north. About 60 people have been killed in Israel in these attacks, about half of whom are soldiers.
Hezbollah has said it will continue its attacks until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, but it appears it will escalate further after months of talks brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar stalled. It has become difficult.
Israel is still at war in Gaza more than a year after the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. About 100 captives are still held, about a third of whom are believed dead.
Israel has been waging a major operation for more than a week in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in the north of the territory that dates back to the 1948 war around Israel’s creation. Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas, saying Hamas militants have regrouped.
According to Dr. Munir al-Borsh, director general of Gaza’s health ministry, hospitals have received about 350 bodies since the offensive began on October 6.
he told AP More than half of the dead were women and children, and many bodies lay in the streets and under debris, with rescue teams unable to reach them due to Israeli attacks. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.
More than 42,000 people have been killed in the Israeli attack, according to the health ministry, which does not say how many were combatants, but says more than half were women and children. The offensive has devastated large areas and displaced about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people, with hundreds of thousands forced into crowded tent camps or school-based shelters.
published – October 16, 2024 11:36 PM IST