Red Cross says at least 18 killed in Israeli strike in north Lebanon
by AFP, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/afp/ · TheJournal.ieLAST UPDATE | 28 mins ago
THE LEBANESE RED Cross has said 18 people have died in a strike on north Lebanon, with the health ministry and official media reporting an Israeli raid on the Christian-majority area far from Hezbollah strongholds.
“Eighteen dead and four wounded in the strike on Aito,” the Red Cross said, referring to a village in the Christian-majority Zgharta district.
The health ministry earlier said an Israeli strike there killed nine people, with the official National News Agency also saying Israel targeted a “residential apartment” in the village.
So far, Israeli strikes have mainly been concentrated in predominantly Shia areas, where Hezbollah has stronger support.
An AFP photographer at the site of the strike said it had levelled a residential building at the entrance to the village.
Body parts were scattered in the rubble, with Red Cross volunteers searching for survivors in the wreckage while ambulances evacuated wounded people.
The Lebanese army imposed a security cordon in the area, where the strike had also sparked a fire, he said.
On Saturday, the health ministry reported two dead and four wounded in an Israeli strike on Deir Billa, some 15 kilometres from the town of Batroun on Lebanon’s north coast.
DNA tests were being carried out to determine the identity of the remains, the statement added.
Israeli ‘infiltration’
Earlier today, Hezbollah said its fighters fired artillery rounds at Israeli troops attempting an “infiltration” into south Lebanon.
“During an enemy infantry force’s attempted infiltration into Lebanese territory” near the border village of Markaba, Hezbollah fighters targeted the force “with artillery shells”, a statement said.
It added that adding Hezbollah targeted Israeli soldiers elsewhere with rockets, including in south Lebanon’s Labbouneh area.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said a Hezbollah drone killed four soldiers at one of its northern bases on Sunday.
The attack on a military training camp in Binyamina, near Haifa, was the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since 23 September, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
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Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded.
In Gaza, authorities said the death toll from an Israeli strike on Sunday on a school being used as a shelter for displaced people had risen to 15, including whole families, while a separate overnight strike on a hospital killed four.
And as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon’s south, United Nations peacekeepers said they had again been in the firing line.
They said Israeli troops “forcibly” entered a UN position with two tanks, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the force to withdraw from the area.
Israel’s military said a tank had backed into the UN post while under fire.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said late Sunday that it launched “a squadron of attack drones” at the Binyamina camp, around 30 kilometres south of the major city of Haifa.
The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.
In a later statement, Hezbollah warned Israel that “what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our noble and dear people”.
An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted “over 60 wounded people” with injuries ranging from mild to critical.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year in support of Hamas militants in Gaza.
Since late September, however, its strikes have reached further into the country.
Israel’s sophisticated air defences have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.
Israel’s recent strikes have increasingly focused on areas beyond Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in southern Beirut, and Lebanon’s south and east.
Israel said its air force hit “Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities” and other targets, while on the ground its soldiers “eliminated dozens” of fighters.
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Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Israeli forces had “escalated their attacks” on southern Lebanon with “successive air strikes” pounding several border villages.
It later reported that an Israeli strike on Mayfadoun, near Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, had killed five people and wounded one other.
Hezbollah said its forces clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” villages along the border.
Before the drone strike it had said it launched a salvo of rockets at a “base in southern Haifa”.
The group later aired an audio recording of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah calling on fighters to “defend this holy and blessed land and this honourable people”.
Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in south Beirut on 27 September and several other senior commanders of the movement have also been killed.
Israel’s military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.
A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel’s military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.
UN peacekeepers accused Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions before dawn Sunday in south Lebanon, the latest of several incidents the UNIFIL mission has reported since Thursday.
Five Blue Helmets have so far been injured, provoking international condemnation.
“Two IDF (Israeli military) Merkava tanks destroyed the position’s main gate and forcibly entered the position” in the Ramia area, before leaving 45 minutes later, UNIFIL said.
The Israeli military later said a tank “backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.