Lebanon: Israeli attack kills at least 40 people in east of country

An Israeli attack in eastern Lebanon on Wednesday killed at least 40 people, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

An Israeli official said the attacks in Baalbek and Bekaa provinces targeted operatives of the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s culture minister said one of the attacks also severely damaged an Ottoman-era building near the Roman ruins of Baalbek, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Israel also launched airstrikes in southern Beirut on Wednesday after the Israel Defense Forces issued an evacuation warning. The military said the attack hit Hezbollah command centers, weapons depots and other infrastructure.

The warning later issued by the IDF covered four neighborhoods in southern Beirut, including an area near Lebanon’s international airport, which continues to operate despite Israeli air strikes on the capital.

Soon after, images showed a huge fireball and thick black smoke rising into the night sky over Beirut.

Meanwhile, medics said a rocket fired by Lebanese Hezbollah militants killed an Israeli man near a kibbutz in northern Israel.

The Lebanese Civil Defense agency also said that 30 bodies were recovered from a four-story apartment building that was attacked by Israel on Tuesday night. One side of the building was destroyed and a fire broke out.

The building is reportedly housing displaced people in Barja, a predominantly Sunni Muslim coastal town south of Beirut.

The Israeli military said it had attacked Hezbollah’s “terror infrastructure”.

A man who lives on an upper floor of the apartment building that was hit said his son and wife were injured by falling masonry.

“These rocks you see here weigh 100 kilograms and they fell on a 13 kilogram child,” Moussa Zahran told Reuters as he surveyed the damage.

“I deleted it [the rocks] Then… handed the son over to the civil protection department through the window. I carried my wife downstairs and out the back of the building…I thanked God and glory be to Him for this miracle.

An Irish Times reporter quoted a member of the Civil Defense at the scene as saying: The victims whose bodies were found intact included seven women and three children. – A 7-month-old baby and two girls aged 7 and 12 years.

Neighbors also said the building was home to displaced people fleeing other areas, she added.

No evacuation warning was issued before the strike, Reuters reported.

The Lebanese Health Ministry on Tuesday evening put the preliminary death toll in the Barja attack at 20, but did not provide an updated figure on Wednesday.

On Wednesday evening, the ministry said 40 people were killed and 53 injured in a series of Israeli attacks in Bekaa and Baalbek governorates, which cover much of the eastern Bekaa Valley. The statement added that 16 people were killed in the village of Nasriya and 11 in the city of Baalbek.

Lebanese Culture Minister Mohamed Mortada also told the UNESCO director-general that one of the attacks “caused severe damage to the ancient Manshiya architecture in the city of Baalbek,” which he said dates back to the Ottoman Empire period, located near the Lebanese capital.

“The destruction of this special monument next to a UNESCO World Heritage site is an irreparable loss for Lebanon and world heritage,” he warned.

AFP reporters also reported that the famous 19th-century Palmyra Hotel near the Roman ruins was damaged by a nearby attack, which the health ministry said killed two people.

An Israeli military official said its planes struck based on precise intelligence indicating the presence of Hezbollah operatives in the Baalbek area.

The military also said it had killed a Hezbollah force commander in the southern border area of ​​Khiyam, and airstrikes and forces operating inside southern Lebanon had killed a number of other Hezbollah fighters over the past day.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s new secretary-general, Naeem Qasim, said in a speech that the group had “tens of thousands of well-trained resistance fighters” who were ready to fight and that anywhere in Israel was “beyond limit the attack range of our drones and missiles.”

“I will tell you very clearly, we firmly believe that there is only one thing that can stop this war of aggression, and that is the battlefield,” he declared, adding that he did not believe “political action” could end the conflict.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired about 170 rockets into northern and central Israel on Wednesday.

In the evening, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said a man was killed by a rocket near Kfar Masaryk kibbutz, south of the coastal town of Acre.

Paramedics said the man was found in a field with severe shrapnel wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Later, Israeli media identified him as Sivan Sade, an 18-year-old resident of Kfar Masaryk who had been working in the field.

Also on Wednesday, Israeli media said a rocket hit a parking lot near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, but the Israel Airports Authority said its operations had not been affected. Hezbollah said it was targeting the Tsarifen military base near the airport.

A parked car was also hit by a rocket in the town of Ra’anana, north of Tel Aviv.

At least 2,400 people have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced across Lebanon since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalated six weeks ago, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli airstrikes wiped out much of the group’s leadership, including Qasim’s predecessor Hassan Nasrallah, and caused widespread destruction in southern and eastern Lebanon and parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, which are home to Allah The powerful force of the party.

The war in Gaza sparked nearly a year of cross-border fighting and Israel launched attacks on Hezbollah.

The group said it wanted to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israel’s northern border areas who had been displaced by rocket attacks. Palestinians launched rocket attacks.

Israeli authorities say Hezbollah attacks in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights last year killed more than 70 people.