An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not clear what the target was. The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito, which is part of the country's Christian heartland in the north and far from the Hezbollah militant group's main areas of influence in the south and east.
Rescue workers in Aito searched through the rubble of the building as ambulances stood by to receive the bodies of victims. A number of nearby buildings and cars were also damaged in the strike.
The strike came a day after a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the army base and soldiers injured in the attack, vowing that “we will continue to strike Hezbollah without compassion in every part of Lebanon, including in Beirut.”
Sixty-one people were wounded in Sunday's attack. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel over the past year, killing more than 60 people, although Israel says most have been intercepted by its air defense systems or hit open areas.
In Lebanon, some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since last October, according to the country's Health Ministry. More than three-quarters of the deaths occurred in the past month.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has vowed to keep up its attacks on Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. Israel has said its campaign against Hezbollah is aimed at stopping those attacks so displaced Israelis can feel safe returning to their homes near the Lebanese border.
Earlier on Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns.
The Israeli military said the strike in Gaza targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.
Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.
That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law.
The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it's unclear whether it has been adopted. The military says it has not received such orders.
Israeli rights groups on Monday called on the international community to prevent Israel from carrying out the plan, saying there are “alarming signs” that Israel is beginning to implement it.
The statement, signed by B'Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, warned that states “have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer.
On Monday, the Israeli military said it allowed 30 trucks carrying flour and food into north Gaza. COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, said the trucks entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing.
© Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
21 Comments
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sakurasuki
Targeting Christian population and UN peacekeeping troops,
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/10/israeli-forces-fire-on-un-peacekeepers-in-lebanon-wounding-two
while in Gaza targeting hospital, people are burned alive.
https://www.newarab.com/news/palestinians-patients-burned-alive-israel-bombs-gaza-hospital
.
Is it still about hostage? Will it stops there or more weapon to come?
https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-america-biden-administration-weapons-bombs-state-department
RichardPearce
The people saying 'the war began on October 7th are counting on you not to have read the PCHRGaza reports of October 3rd and every week previous during the period of 'relative calm'.
They're still publicly available.
sakurasuki
Those reports for October 3rd, still available:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ngo-action-news-3-october-2024/
https://www.un.org/unispal/document-source/palestinian-centre-for-human-rights/
Mr Kipling
How will the Christian right react to fellow Christians being slaughtered by Zionists?
They will continue to support them 100% along with Biden, Trump and Harris.
wallace
it's not the first time Israel has bombed a Christian community.
WoodyLee
Bibi knows NO Limits, he is even sacrificing Israel for his personal gains.
kurisupisu
Where do Palestinians go to avoid missiles?
They have no shelter.
They cannot leave Gaza.
Now Northern Lebanon is being bombed and the same fate is being inflicted on the Lebanese.
One difference is that many will flee to Syria but that is also the target of Israeli aggression.
Aly Rustom
exactly.
WoodyLee
This conflict did NOT begin on Oct. 2023, Israel under Bibi and his war mongers government stepped up personal attacks on Palestinians across Palestine and increased land grapping of Palestinian land. Homes owners were kicked out of their great grandparents homes in East Jerusalem and Hebron to make space for settlers from East Europe.
Injustice towards the Palestinians have been taking place at the watch of the so called Free World and Nothing was being done to stop it at the UN or anywhere else.
The Palestinians have every right to self defense by any means possible to stop this aggression and injustice.
NB
The declared plan of Hamas, the Hezbollah government of Lebanon and the Mullah regime of Iran is to put an end to the existence of Israel. That is, to commit genocide to the Jewish people.
And they work to implement this plan. On October 7 2023 they launched a giant massacre. Now they are attacking Israel Using drones, ballistic missiles, knifes and demolition charges. Iran has conducted its first nuclear detonation, according to Russian sources.
They are willing to sacrifice their own nations for the "holy goal" of exterminating the tiny Israel.
This sacrifice serves them well. Their propaganda machine works extra hours, and portrays them as victims.
The Jewish people, who went passively to meet their death in the 1940s, will not die alone this time.
Alfie Noakes
-Patients on IV drips were burned alive, unable to escape.
https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1845638569869844965
-They bombed Saint George’s church in Dardghaya, in Southern Lebanon last week, killing at least eight people, among them five members of the Civil Defense Rescue Team. It's a key tactic in the Israeli/Western genocide, murdering medical and rescue staff, destroying hospitals, clinics, fire stations and the like.
https://zenit.org/2024/10/11/israel-bombs-catholic-church-in-lebanon-and-attacks-un-blue-helmets/
WoodyLee
@NB
""The Jewish people, who went passively to meet their death in the 1940s, will not die alone this time.""
FYI, It wasn't Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Muslims, or even Arabs who killed the Jews in 1940s, it was the very same people who are still doing till this day.
owzer
Go Israel!
Chabbawanga
Israel in its current form has no right to exist in the modern world. It should be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
NB
What is the meaning of rebuilding a state from the ground up after its entire population is dead?
Chabbawanga
I dunno, ask Israel what they are doing in Gaza?
But seriously, the deconstruction of Israel does not necessitate any death, just the end to the current ethno-fascist, genocidal government and the aparteid and annexation of Palestinian territory.
NB
Do Hamas, Lebanon and Iran think so?
Ricky Kaminski13
More disgusting reporting.
Was waiting for the child reference.
Israel, pay these shameless low resolution narrative spinner cowards zero heed. They have no solutions nor seek them, would refuse you the right to defend yourself if they had their way, for you are to live with neighbors actively seeking to destroy you and do nothing to prevent them from fulfilling their backwards murderous bloodlust. Just get used to it, because the international press says so.
They want to hold you to the highest of standards, which you are actually living up to, and even then you will be condemned. Of course their jihadist hero’s get to play by no rules, no standards and have a free run at preparing to kill you my any means necessary, all at the same as they put their own citizenship at risk. Freedom fighters one second, tragic victims wailing at the sky the next. The press tows the line, day in and day out. Pulling at the heart strings and pushing all of the emotional buttons to keep you blind to the simple truth that it’s war being fought with the most despicable of tactics on many fronts.
It’s almost ironic. The nation with one of the greatest military intelligence mechanisms in the world vs those with very little intelligence to comprehend good from evil.
You read reports like this and it sounds like Israel are just hitting random anyone’s, throw in the word children for effect and it’s the daily mush. In reality is that these will be all precision targets. Bad people gone for the greater good.
God speed. Never again! Bring the hostages home. Hope this message was not too ‘offensive’ this time to get moderated again. I am trying!
Chabbawanga
Of course discourse varies between the groups, but the core objective is an end to the Israeli state and the zionist regime. In many statements they have distinguished clearly between Jews and Israel. There have been some inflammatory statements by leaders and politicians regarding jews in the past, but taking these statements as official policy would be like framing the ramblings of Ben Gvir or Bezalel Smoltrich as official Israeli policy.
Sanjinosebleed
The only good thing to come out of this is that Israel is a dead man walking! The economy is kaput. Any sympathy the Zionists had because of the antisemitism trope is dissolving and the world population is waking up to the reality that Zionism is a racist cult controlled by blood thirsty lunatics!
NB
When they shout "Death to Israel" in the streets of Tehran, when Khemenai exclaims "Death to Israel", what is the meaning?
Ricky Kaminski13
It’s an invitation to dialogue…