Israeli strikes kill 27 in Lebanon, even in a city with a dark history of civilian deaths

BLOOD: Israeli airstrikes hit areas across Lebanon, killing at least 27 people in the past 24 hours, officials said Wednesday, including more than a dozen in a southern city where Israeli bombings in previous conflicts are etched in the local memory. The city’s mayor was among those killed in an attack that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting to coordinate relief efforts.

The Israeli military said they targeted a Hezbollah commander in Tuesday night’s attacks in the southern city of Qana, where 15 people were killed. Associated Press photos and videos from the scene showed several buildings collapsed and others with their upper floors collapsed. Rescuers carried away the remains of the dead and used an excavator to remove the debris while searching for more victims.

Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, a Hezbollah commander in charge of the Qana area. In 1996, an Israeli artillery bombardment of a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and injured dozens more, including four. UN peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli attack on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it had attacked a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

“Qana always gets its share,” Mayor Mohammed Krasht told the AP, referring to the city’s bleak history. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused Israel of “intentionally attacking” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.

“What solution can be expected in the face of this reality?” he asked in a statement.

Attacks continued across Lebanon, including in southern Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley and Nabatiyeh, where the Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities that had been embedded in civilian areas. Lebanon’s crisis response unit recorded 138 airstrikes and shelling on Wednesday.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired more than 90 projectiles toward Israel on Wednesday. Four civilians were wounded in the attacks, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service.

Israel says it blew up Hezbollah tunnel

A widely circulated video showed the Israeli army detonating massive explosives on a hill in Mhaibeb, a town about three kilometers (two miles) from the border with Israel. The Israeli military said they targeted a Hezbollah tunnel beneath the village. The mayor of the neighboring village of Mays el Jabal, Abdelmoe’m Shucair, told the AP that the families had already left the village.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington that the United States was aware of the images and that “obviously, we don’t want to see entire towns destroyed.” He called on Israel to pursue Hezbollah’s objectives in a way that “protects civilian infrastructure and protects civilians.”

Israel also resumed its bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, striking what it said was 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 casualties.

During an assessment of the situation in northern Israel on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was gaining intelligence from its capture of Hezbollah militants that was significantly weakening Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks. . “We will conduct negotiations under fire, I said it on the first day, I said it in Gaza, I said it here: this is our tool,” he told soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.

Israel resumes attacks in Beirut

The attacks in southern Beirut came after Mikati said the United States had assured him that Israel would stop its attacks on the capital.

Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, which is also a residential and commercial area that is home to a large number of civilians and people not affiliated with the militant group.

The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on social media platform X before the attack in Beirut. An AP photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the warning.

In Nabatiyeh, more than half a dozen attacks hit the city and its surrounding areas, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which said 16 people were killed and 52 wounded. The city’s mayor, Ahmad Kahil, was among the dead, provincial governor Huwaida Turk told The Associated Press.

In his statement on Nabatiyeh, Mikati, the interim prime minister, said the international community has remained “deliberately silent” about Israeli strikes that have killed civilians.

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called reports of Kahlil’s death “alarming.” “This attack follows other incidents in which civilians and civil infrastructure have been attacked across Lebanon,” he said. Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8. 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following the Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

A year of low-level fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border descended into all-out war last month, and Israel invaded Lebanon in early October. Israeli airstrikes have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders, and Israel has vowed to continue its offensive until its citizens can safely return to communities near the border.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said 2,377 people have been killed in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the last month. The fighting has displaced some 1.2 million people in Lebanon, including some 400,000 children.

Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, which have widened their range and become more intense over the past month, have driven some 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north. The attacks have killed nearly 60 people in Israel, about half of them soldiers. Hezbollah has said it will continue its attacks until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, but that looks increasingly remote after months of US-brokered negotiations. Egypt and Qatar came to a standstill.

Palestinians say 350 bodies recovered from Israeli Gaza operation

Israel remains at war in Gaza more than a year after the Hamas attack, in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and another 250 kidnapped. Around 100 captives remain held, of whom around a third are believed to be dead.

Israel has been carrying out a major operation for more than a week in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in the territory’s north that dates back to the 1948 war that surrounded Israel’s creation. Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas after saying Hamas militants had regrouped.

Hospitals have received around 350 bodies since the Jabaliya offensive began on October 6, according to Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, director general of Gaza’s Health Ministry. He told the AP that more than half of the dead were women and children, adding that many bodies remain in the streets and under rubble, and rescue teams cannot reach them because of Israeli attacks. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 people, according to the Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says more than half were women and children. The offensive has left large areas in ruins and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands to camp in overcrowded tent camps or schools converted into shelters.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Republic and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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