Israeli attacks kill 25 people in Lebanon, also in a city with a dark history

QANA, Lebanon (AP) – Israeli Airstrikes bombed areas across LebanonAt least 27 people were killed in the past 24 hours, officials said Wednesday, including more than a dozen in a southern city where Israeli bombings in previous conflicts are seared into local memories.

Elsewhere in the south, the mayor of a city was among the dead in a strike that Lebanese authorities said targeted a meeting to coordinate relief efforts.

The Israeli military said it targeted a Hezbollah commander in the attacks late Tuesday southern city of Canain which 15 people were killed. Associated Press photos and videos of the scene showed several buildings leveled and others whose top floors had collapsed. In search of more victims, rescue workers carried away the remains of the dead and used a bulldozer to remove debris.

Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, a Hezbollah commander in charge of the Cana area.

In 1996, Israeli artillery fire on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and injured scores of others, including four UN peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli attack on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it hit a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

“Qana always gets its share,” Mayor Mohammed Krasht told the AP, citing the city’s dark history.

Lebanon’s acting prime minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile, accused Israel of “deliberately targeting” a local council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.

“Given this reality, what solution can be hoped for?” he asked in a statement.

Attacks continued across Lebanon, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley and in Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military said it attacked Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities embedded in civilian areas. Lebanon’s crisis response unit recorded 138 airstrikes and grenade attacks on Wednesday.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired more than 90 projectiles into Israel on Wednesday. According to the Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom, four civilians were injured in the attacks.

Israel says it blew up a Hezbollah tunnel

A widely circulated video showed the Israeli army detonating massive explosives on a hill in Mhaibeb, a town about three kilometers (two miles) from the border with Israel. The Israeli military said it attacked a Hezbollah tunnel under the village. The mayor of the neighboring village of Mays el Jabal, Abdelmoe’m Shucair, told the AP that families had already left the village.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in Washington that the U.S. was aware of the footage and “of course we don’t want entire villages to be destroyed.” He called on Israel to pursue Hezbollah’s goals in a way that “protects civilian infrastructure and the civilian population.”

Also Israel resumed his barrage After a six-day standoff, he hit an alleged weapons cache under a residential building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, without providing any evidence. The military urged residents to evacuate ahead of the attack and there were no reports of casualties.

During an assessment of the situation in northern Israel on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that by capturing Hezbollah fighters, Israel had gathered intelligence that significantly weakens Hezbollah’s ability to launch attacks. “We will conduct the negotiations under fire, I said that on the first day, I said it in Gaza, I said it here – this is our tool,” he told soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.

Israel resumes attacks on Beirut

The attacks on southern Beirut came after Mikati said the United States had assured him that Israel would limit its attacks on the capital.

Hezbollah has a strong presence in southern Beirut known as Dahiyeh, a residential and commercial area that is home to numerous civilians and people not affiliated with the militant group.

The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on the social media platform X ahead of the attack in Beirut. An AP photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the announcement.

According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health, Nabatiyeh saw more than half a dozen attacks in the city and surrounding areas, killing 16 people and wounding 52. The city’s mayor, Ahmad Kahil, was among those killed, provincial governor Huwaida Turk told The Associated Press.

In his statement on Nabatiyeh, Mikati, the caretaker prime minister, said the international community had “deliberately remained silent” about Israeli attacks that killed civilians.

The UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, called the reports of Kahlil’s death “alarming”.

“This attack follows other incidents in which civilians and civilian infrastructure were attacked across Lebanon,” she said.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, after Hamas carried out a surprise attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

A year of low-level fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border Escalated into all-out war last monthand Israel invaded Lebanon in early October. Have Israeli airstrikes Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed and most of its senior commanders, and Israel has vowed to continue its offensive until its citizens can safely return to communities near the border.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 2,377 people have been killed in Lebanon since last October, more than three-quarters of them in the past month. The fights has been suppressed around 1.2 million people in Lebanon, including around 400,000 children.

Hezbollah’s rocket attacks, which have increased in range and intensity over the past month, have forced around 60,000 Israelis from their homes in the north. The attacks killed almost 60 people in Israel, around half of them soldiers.

Hezbollah has said it will continue its attacks until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, but that appears increasingly unlikely after months of negotiations between the United States, Egypt and Qatar came to a stuttering halt.

According to the Palestinians, 350 bodies were recovered during an Israeli operation in Gaza

More than a year after the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250, Israel is still in the Gaza Strip. Around 100 prisoners are still being held, around a third of whom are considered dead.

Israel has been conducting a major operation for more than a week in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp in the north of the territory the 1948 war over the creation of Israel. Israeli forces repeatedly returned to Jabaliya and other areas after saying Hamas militants had regrouped.

Hospitals have since received around 350 bodies The Jabaliya offensive began on October 6thsaid Dr. Mounir al-Boursh, the director general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health. He told the AP that more than half of the dead were women and children, adding that many bodies lay in the streets and under rubble and rescue teams could not reach them because of Israeli attacks. “Entire families have disappeared,” he said.

According to the Health Ministry, over 42,000 people were killed in the Israeli offensive. The ministry does not say how many of them were fighters; more than half were women and children. The offensive has left large areas in ruins And around 90% of Gaza’s population displaced of 2.3 million people, forcing hundreds of thousands into overcrowded tent camps or schools converted into emergency shelters.

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Chehayeb and Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut. Associated Press reporters Ahmad Mantash in Sidon, Lebanon, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed.

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