BEIRUT, Lebanon
At least 23 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes on two houses in central Lebanon where displaced families were reportedly living, the Lebanese health ministry says.
Fifteen people, mostly women
and children, were killed in Joun and eight others were killed near Baalchmay.
Both villages are in the Mount Lebanon region and outside areas where the armed
group Hezbollah has a strong presence.
The Israeli military said it
was looking into the strikes, which came after it hit what it said were a
number of Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Meanwhile, two people were
killed by Hezbollah rocket fire in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya.
It came a day after Israel’s
defence minister ruled out a ceasefire with Hezbollah until its war goals were
met.
The Israeli military went on
the offensive against Hezbollah - which it proscribes as a terrorist
organisation - after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war
in Gaza.
Israel says it wants to ensure
the safe return of tens of thousands of northern Israeli border area residents
displaced by rocket attacks, which Hezbollah launched in support of
Palestinians the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October
2023.
More than 3,200 people have
been killed in Lebanon since then, including 2,600 in the seven weeks since
Israel launched an intense air campaign followed by a ground invasion in the
south, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Another 1.2 million people
have been displaced.
On Tuesday morning, the
Israeli military carried out at least 10 strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs,
known as Dahieh, after issuing evacuation orders for 11 locations.
Lebanese media reported that
several buildings were levelled, including a medical centre in the Bir al-Abed
area, but there were no reports of casualties.
The Israeli military said it
struck Hezbollah targets, including command centres and weapons production
sites.
In the evening, the Israeli
military declared that it had “dismantled a majority of Hezbollah’s weapons
storage and missile manufacturing facilities” that had been “systematically
concealed beneath civilian buildings” in Dahieh.
Most residents of Dahieh - one
of the areas where Hezbollah has a significant presence, along with southern
Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley - have fled because their neighbourhoods
have been targeted repeatedly since September.
On Tuesday night, the Lebanese
health ministry said 15 people were killed, including eight women and four
children, in an Israeli strike on a house in Joun, in the Chouf mountains near
the southern coastal city of Sidon.
The state-run National News
Agency reported that displaced families had been staying there.
Residents and a security
official said another house where displaced families had taken refuge was hit
in Baalchmay, 30km (20 miles) to the north-east, killing eight people and
injuring five.
Wael Murtada told the Associated Press that the home
had belonged to his uncle and that those inside had fled from Dahieh about 40
days ago. He said at least three children were among the dead.
The targets of the two strikes
were unclear.
Elsewhere in Lebanon, five
people were killed in a strike in the southern village of Teffahta, according
to the health ministry.
In the northern town of Ain
Yaaqou, Lebanon’s Civil Defence agency said its first responders had recovered
the bodies of 16 people, including four Syrian refugees, from the rubble of a
residential building that was destroyed by an air strike on Monday night.
The Israeli military said its
forces had targeted a “military structure with a terrorist inside”.
It also said Israeli soldiers
were continuing ground operations in southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah
infrastructure, including rocket launchers.
About 55 projectiles were
fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon into Israel on Tuesday, according to the
Israeli military.
One rocket hit a warehouse in
Nahariya, killing two Israeli men in their 50s.
"There was a lot of
destruction and an active fire," paramedic Dor Vakinin told AFP news
agency.
"We performed medical
examinations on two men who were lying unconscious...Unfortunately, their
injuries were too severe and after the examinations we had to determine the
death of both of them."
Hezbollah said its fighters
had fired a barrage of rockets at an Israeli military base north of the town of
Acre, and that it had also targeted troops stationed in several Israeli border
communities.
A Hezbollah drone also hit the
playground of a kindergarten in a suburb of the Israeli city of Haifa, but
no-one was hurt.
On Monday, new Defence
Minister Israel Katz wrote on X that he had told a forum of Israel generals
that “there will be no ceasefire” until Hezbollah could no longer carry out
such attacks.
“We will continue to hit
Hezbollah with full force until the goals of the war are achieved. Israel will
not agree to any arrangement that does not guarantee Israel’s right to enforce
and prevent terrorism on its own,” he added.
Katz said the goals were
“disarming Hezbollah and its withdrawal beyond the Litani river”, which runs
about 30km north of the border with Israel, as well as “returning the residents
of the north safely to their homes”.
Earlier, Foreign Minister
Gideon Saar had said there was “a certain progress” after being asked by
journalists in Jerusalem about a possible ceasefire.
Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed
Afif told a news conference in Beirut: “We hear a lot of talk, but so far,
according to my information, nothing official has reached Lebanon or us in this
regard.”
Lebanon’s government has
called for a ceasefire based on the full implementation of UN Security Council
resolution 1701, which ended the last war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
The resolution called for
Lebanese territory south of the Litani to be free of any armed personnel or
weapons other than those of the Lebanese state and a UN peacekeeping force.
Israel has long complained
that the resolution failed to prevent Hezbollah from building a formidable
military presence in south and firing rockets over the border.
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