Lebanon says 20 killed in Israeli strike south of Beirut
It was second Israeli strike on Tuesday in a region outside the strongholds of Hezbollah
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike targeting a residential building in a town south of Beirut on Tuesday killed at least 20 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
“The raid by the Israeli enemy on Barja left 20 dead,”, the ministry said of the raid on the coastal town around 20km south of the capital, adding that rescue operations were under way.
Flames continued to emerge from the building on Tuesday evening, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene, as several families fled the site.
It was the second Israeli strike on Tuesday in a region outside the strongholds of Hezbollah, the militant group targeted by Israel since Sept. 23.
Earlier, a strike targeting another residential building in Jiyeh, near Barja, killed one person, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
A security source told AFP that an apartment used by Hezbollah was targeted.
Israeli military, meanwhile, said it struck a Hezbollah weapons depot in a Syrian town near the Lebanese border.
The strikes came more than a month into the Hezbollah-Israel war which has left at least 1,964 dead in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.
Israeli raids also hit southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa Valley on Tuesday, according to the official National News Agency (NNA), as operations were underway to retrieve corpses from flashpoint areas.
The Lebanese Red Cross and the army retrieved seven corpses from a village in the southern region of Tyre following heavy raids in the area in recent weeks, according to NNA, which said the bodies appeared decomposed.
In a separate mission, the Lebanese Red Cross was also working on Tuesday to retrieve more than a dozen corpses that had been trapped in the flashpoint border town of Khiam for more than one week, NNA said.
Rescuers first entered on Sunday, having previously been unable to reach the area, where Hezbollah has said it is battling Israeli ground forces, according to NNA.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, claimed rocket and drone strikes at northern Israel, as well as on Israeli troops near the border inside Lebanon.
Syria strike
Also on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it “conducted an intelligence-based strike on weapons storage facilities used by Hezbollah’s munitions unit in the area of Al Qusayr” in Syria, near the border with Lebanon.
“Hezbollah’s munitions unit is responsible for the storage of weapons in Lebanon and has recently expanded its activities into Syria in the area of Al-Qusayr,” it added.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said: “An Israeli aggression targeted the industrial zone in Al-Qusayr.
“The Israeli aggression also targeted some residential buildings surrounding the industrial zone,” it added.
It did not report any casualties.
Areas along the Syria-Lebanon border have come under mounting attack as Israel has sought to prevent Hezbollah from replenishing its arsenal after the conflict escalated in September.
The main border crossing, known as Masnaa on the Lebanese side, was put out of service by an Israeli strike last month.
On Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Al Qusayr.
The Britain-based war monitor said the dead were mostly civilians but also included three Syrian fighters for Hezbollah.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said “weapons depots and headquarters” used by Hezbollah were hit in the Thursday strike.
He said the strikes sought to thwart efforts to “transfer weapons from Iran via Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon”.