[ad_1]
This photo, taken under the guidance of the media office of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, shows a man salvaging the wreckage of a destroyed greenhouse at the site of an Israeli bombing in Salin in the Bekaa Valley in east-central Lebanon on the night of August 20, 2024. AFP
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Wednesday morning that Israeli strikes in the east of the country killed one person and wounded 20. Hours earlier, the ministry said Israeli strikes in the south of the country killed four people.
The attack came 24 hours after Israel carried out a similar raid deep into eastern Lebanon, amid heightened tensions after Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander.
The Health Ministry said in its latest count that one person was killed and “20 were injured” as a result of “attacks by the Israeli enemy in the Bekaa Valley”.
read: Hezbollah says it fired ‘heavy rocket fire’ at Israeli positions
One person was in critical condition, while “eight children and a pregnant woman suffered moderate injuries,” the statement said.
An unnamed Hezbollah source said there had been multiple attacks on areas around the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, including the village of Nabishet, but did not specify the targets.
A source at a local hospital told AFP that among the injured were five children aged no more than 10, all from the same family.
The attack, which took place around midnight, followed a similar strike in the Bekaa region on Monday evening, which Israel said targeted “Hezbollah’s weapons storage facilities.”
read: Philippines urges Filipinos in Lebanon to evacuate due to Israeli airstrikes
Earlier, Israel’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that four people were killed in an Israeli attack on the southern border village of Dhayra, while Hezbollah also said four of its fighters were killed.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October last year, there have been almost daily cross-border exchanges of fire between the Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and the Israeli army.
The violence has been mostly confined to the Lebanese-Israeli border area, but Israel has repeatedly attacked Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border, an area where Hezbollah is strong.
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Tuesday, including the firing of Katyusha rockets at several northern Israeli military positions in retaliation for Israeli attacks, including at Dhayra.
The Shiite Muslim movement also said it had launched “squadrons of explosive-laden drones” and “intensive rocket attacks” at several Israeli positions in the Golan Heights in response to Monday night’s attack in the Bekaa Valley.
Medical staff attacked
In a separate statement, the Israeli military said a total of about 115 “projectiles” were found crossing the border from Lebanon.
The statement also said that “a large number of suspicious aerial targets were detected flying from Lebanon” and that air defense forces had intercepted some of them.
There were no reports of injuries, but the military said the incident caused fires in some areas.
The military also said the air force attacked projectile launchers and several “Hezbollah military” facilities in southern Lebanon.
Israeli forces “targeted” three first responders from the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Council in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring them and “severely damaging the ambulance they were travelling in,” Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
The ministry “condemns in the strongest terms the repeated attacks against health workers in southern Lebanon”.
Several militant groups run medical centres and emergency response operations in Lebanon, where at least 21 rescue workers have been killed since October, according to an AFP tally.
Fears of a major escalation have grown since Hezbollah and Iran vowed to respond to two Israeli killings late last month.
The Israeli strike on a southern Beirut suburb killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander, shortly after an attack in Tehran attributed to Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, a political leader of Hamas.
Cross-border violence has killed about 590 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Unable to save your subscription. Please try again.
Your subscription was successful.
According to the Israeli military, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights.
[ad_2]
Source link
