Israeli strikes yesterday on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon killed 100 people including children, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said, in the largest cross-border escalation since war erupted in Gaza on Oct. 7 last year.
War began when Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Iran-backed groups around the region, chiefly Hezbollah, increasingly drawn into the violence.
Israel yesterday said that it had hit more than 300 Hezbollah sites with dozens of strikes, while Hezbollah said that it had targeted three sites in northern Israel.
Photo: Reuters
The strikes on Lebanon, which also wounded more than 400 people according to the health ministry, were the deadliest in nearly a year of violence along the border with Israel.
“Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning ... killed 100 and injured more than 400,” the health ministry said in a statement, adding that “children, women and paramedics” were among the dead and wounded.
World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply from Israel’s southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon.
“We sleep and wake up to bombardment... That’s what our life has become,” said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the south Lebanon village of Zawtar.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would “go on for the near future.”
Hagari said Israel’s military “will engage in [more] extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon.”
He told civilians “to immediately move out of harm’s way for their own safety.”
Hezbollah, a powerful political and military force in Lebanon, says it is acting in its fight along Lebanon’s southern border with Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.
In divided Lebanon, large parts of the south and east of the nation, as well as the southern suburbs of capital, Beirut, are seen as strongholds of Hezbollah, where the group has historically wielded influence and built up services for its Shiite Muslim support base.
Ahead of the annual UN General Assembly in New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of Lebanon becoming “another Gaza” and said it was “clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire.”
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported “more than 80 airstrikes in half an hour” early yesterday targeting the south of the nation, as well as intense raids in the Bekaa Valley to the east.
Explosions around the ancient city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon triggered flashes of fire and sent smoke billowing into the sky.
The Israeli military said it would launch “large-scale” strikes in the Bekaa Valley in the east, warning residents to move away from Hezbollah sites there.
Residents and local media said strikes also hit the outskirts of the coastal city Tyre.
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