BEIRUT (AP) — Israel launched dozens of heavy airstrikes across rural northeast Lebanon on Friday, killing at least 52 people and wounding dozens more, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported.
Palestinians in central Gaza have recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in Israeli military fire that began on Thursday, hospital officials said.
The violence comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration ramps up new diplomatic pressure to reach a temporary ceasefire agreement just days before the presidential election.
Israel’s emergency services said seven people were injured in an attack in the central town of Thira in the early hours of Saturday. According to the Israeli military, three projectiles entered Israel from Lebanon and some were intercepted.
Magen David Adomservice said two of the injured were in moderate condition from the attack and the others had minor injuries. Photos released by the service showed damage to what appears to be an apartment building.
Israel has stepped up attacks on remaining Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip, crushing the northern region and raising concerns that the humanitarian situation for civilians still remaining there will deteriorate.
In Lebanon, Israel in recent weeks initially targeted small villages on the southern border where Hezbollah operates, but has since moved on to larger urban centers, including the town of Baalbek, home to 80,000 people. is expanding its range.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is Lebanon’s main political party and provider of social services.
Immediately after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the Gaza War, Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones, and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas. A year of cross-border fighting erupted into full-scale war on October 1, when Israeli forces launched their first ground invasion into southern Lebanon since 2006.
Israel carried out a series of heavy airstrikes on Friday, killing at least 52 people in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where small villages, olive groves and wineries nestled between Lebanon’s mountains had until recently been largely spared from Israel’s worst bombings. Many more families were forced to evacuate. They flee with whatever they can carry, sending thick plumes of smoke over the horizon.
Hussein Haji Hassan, a Lebanese lawmaker representing the region, said Israeli airstrikes intensified in and around the northeastern city of Baalbek after Israel issued an evacuation warning, with 60,000 people evacuated and nearby. said that the village was emptied.
In Lebanon, rescue teams searched for survivors after an airstrike killed nine people and destroyed a building housing 20 people in the town of Younin. Further Israeli airstrikes killed 12 people in the town of Amhaz and 31 others in at least a dozen villages in northeast Lebanon, bringing the total death toll to 52, the Health Ministry said. The ministry added that 72 people were injured in the shelling.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the deadly attack.
Panic spread in the Lebanese capital after a rare lull as Israeli warplanes bombed the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight and early Friday for the second time in four days. The Israeli military said Hezbollah’s weapons manufacturing site and headquarters had been attacked and warned residents to evacuate at least nine locations in Dahiyeh.
There were no reports of casualties from Dahiyeh, but Dahiyeh is experiencing a nightly exodus of residents due to fears of Israeli bombing.
On Friday, bulldozers roared through clouds of dirt and smoke as Israeli warplanes cleared debris from a shattered road that had left dozens of buildings reduced to skeletons.
The mid-rise apartment complex, once home to families and businesses, was left exposed to the wind, walls blown off and furniture buried. Hezbollah supporters raised the group’s bright yellow flag above the rubble in several locations.
Not including Friday’s increase in deaths, more than 2,897 people have been killed and more than 13,150 injured in Lebanon since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah broke out in 2023, the Health Ministry reported. Health authorities said a quarter of the deaths were women and children.
Overall, the United Nations agency estimates that Israel’s ground invasion and shelling of Lebanon has displaced 1.4 million people. Some 60,000 residents of northern Israeli communities near Lebanon have also been displaced for more than a year.
Hezbollah continues to fire rockets into northern Israel, and on Thursday a projectile from Lebanon struck an agricultural area, killing seven people, including four Thai farm workers.
Israel continued its shelling of Gaza on Friday, with heavy airstrikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 21 Palestinians, including an 18-month-old and his 10-year-old sister, according to health officials. It is said that he died. at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israeli airstrikes also hit a motorbike in Zuwaydah and a house in Deir al-Balah, killing four more people, bringing the total death toll in the Gaza Strip to 25 on Friday, hospital officials said.
Israel said it targeted Hamas infrastructure and militants operating near the Nuseyrat refugee camp, but did not comment on attacks outside the camp. It said it was aware of reports of civilian casualties and was investigating. In a separate statement, the military said an airstrike on their vehicle in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis killed Hamas Politburo official Izz al-Din Kassab and his aide Ayman Aish.
Hamas confirmed the death of Kassab, who was little known to the public. Israel claimed he was a coordinator between armed groups in Gaza.
There were no signs of a ceasefire breaking in Lebanon or Gaza, as American diplomats left the region after a series of meetings with Israeli officials.
On Friday, Hamas doubled down on long-standing demands for a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza, saying all Israel had offered in recent negotiations was a pause in the war and more aid. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
“The proposal does not meet the comprehensive needs of the Palestinian people in terms of security, stability, relief and reconstruction,” Bassem Naem, a senior Hamas official, told Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV. He spoke first before confirming his position. Associated Press.
Israel’s violent war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. .
Health authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip do not distinguish between civilians and fighters, but say more than half of the enclave’s deaths are women and children.
The Israeli military has recently turned its attention to Hamas militants who have reunited in northern Gaza, renewing attacks that have trapped tens of thousands of people under heavy shelling without adequate food and water.
Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly hampered an emergency polio vaccination campaign, but the World Health Organization announced on Saturday that it would finally resume, but only in Gaza City. Towns further north, including Jabaliya, Beit Rahiya and Beit Hanoun, remain inaccessible as Israel tightens its siege.
The United Nations and other humanitarian organizations on Friday cited Israel’s denial of humanitarian aid to the region, military raids on hospitals, airstrikes on shelters and obstruction of Palestinian rescue teams struggling to rescue survivors. , warned that “the situation developing in northern Gaza is apocalyptic.” Israeli attack.
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Shurafa reported from Deir Bala, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem; Bassem Mourou of Beirut. David Rising in Bangkok. Isabel Debre of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Edith Lederer of New York. and Jamie Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
