BLOG At least 21 people died in an Israeli attack in northern Lebanon

The Israeli military said it was targeting extremists hiding among civilians, but did not provide evidence

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Consequences of the Israeli attack, Photo: Reuters
Consequences of the Israeli attack, Photo: Reuters
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.
Ažurirano: 14.10.2024. 21:50h
Finished
20: 31h

At least 21 people were killed in an Israeli aerial attack on a village in the north of Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced the new balance of the attack, which is not yet final.

The ministry added that DNA tests are being conducted to identify the victims.

It is not clear what was the target of the attack on a small residential building in the village of Aito, where there is no stronghold of the armed group Hezbollah, reports Agence France-Presse.

For the first time since the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah and Izael entered into open war on September 23, the Christian village of Aito was targeted.

The target of the attack was an apartment, according to the Lebanese agency ANI.

An official told AFP that the building houses several families displaced from southern Lebanon, the stronghold of Hezbollah, where most of the fighting is going on.

On Saturday, 16 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a Shiite village north of Beirut, which is also not a Hezbollah stronghold.

Another six died outside areas considered strongholds of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, two of them in a building in Deir Bela, where displaced people from the south are staying, according to the ANI agency.

For more than a year, since the start of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging cross-border fire between southern Lebanon and northern Israel. Those clashes escalated into open war three weeks ago with extensive Israeli bombing across Lebanon and ground operations in the south.

More than 1.300 people have died in Lebanon since Israeli attacks, according to an Agence France-Presse estimate based on official figures.

A few hours before today's attack in Lebanon, four people were killed in the Gaza Strip and several dozen were wounded in an Israeli attack on a hospital yard that caused a fire in a nearby refugee tent settlement, reports AP.

Israel said it targeted Hamas fighters allegedly hiding among civilians in the attack, but did not provide evidence of this. Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted civilian shelters in previous months, citing the same reason for the attack.

The hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah was already overcrowded because it received the wounded in the attack on the temporary shelter that was erected in the school yard, which killed at least 20 people yesterday.

This morning's attack damaged the hospital, and the fire engulfed a large number of refugee tents, after which residents' fuel canisters exploded.

Israel continues to carry out near-daily attacks across the Gaza Strip more than a year after the start of the war there, and is carrying out a major ground attack in northern Gaza, where it says Hamas fighters have regrouped.

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19: 59h

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that Israel will continue "relentless attacks on Hezbollah, including in Beirut."

"I want to be clear, we will continue to hit Hezbollah mercilessly in all parts of Lebanon, including in Beirut," Netanyahu said during a visit to the military base that Hezbollah hit on Sunday, killing four Israeli soldiers.

After several months of cross-border clashes between Israel and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement, an ally of the Palestinian Hamas, the Israeli army intensified its airstrikes on Lebanon on September 23 and launched ground operations on September 30.

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19: 12h

The head of the UN refugee agency today pointed out the urgent need for a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza to prevent a wider regional conflict with consequences for the whole world.

"A ceasefire backed by a meaningful peace process is the only way to end this cycle of violence, hatred and misery," said Filippo Grandi at the opening of the annual meeting of the executive committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva.

After months of cross-border clashes between Israel and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement, an ally of Palestinian Hamas, the Israeli military stepped up its airstrikes in Lebanon on September 23 and then launched ground operations on September 30.

More than 1.300 people have been killed in Lebanon since September 23, according to Agence France-Presse.

According to the UN, in the two weeks since then, more than a million people have been displaced in Lebanon or have left the country, a sixth of the population.

Hezbollah reactivated the front on the border with Israel after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 last year and the beginning of the war in Gaza, in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas.

Israel has vowed to fight Hezbollah until victory, to allow the return of some 60.000 Israeli residents displaced by the Lebanese movement's incessant rocket attacks to the northern border areas of Israel.

"You've seen the pictures and heard the numbers - hundreds of thousands of people displaced inside Lebanon trying to escape Israeli airstrikes," Grandi said, adding that once again the distinction between civilians and combatants "has virtually disappeared."

The war in Lebanon has also caused an exodus to Syria including a large number of Syrian refugees who had previously fled the civil war in their country. In total, more than 400.000 people fled Lebanon to Syria between September 23 and October 5, according to Lebanese authorities.

"This massive influx represents the largest number of people returning to Syria since Syrian refugees began fleeing the country in 2011," Grandi said.

"It's like misery is added to misery," he said.

Grandi said there are people fleeing even further and that around 7.500 people have fled to Iraq.

The High Commissioner condemned the attacks on humanitarian workers in the region, but emphasized that the UN will remain on the ground.

He paid tribute to two UNHCR workers killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon last month and recalled that 226 people working for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) lost their lives in the war in Gaza.

"We cannot accept that the lives of humanitarians are regarded as simple collateral damage or worse, that they are the subject of defamation," he said.

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15: 52h

At least 18 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in northern Lebanon, the Lebanese Red Cross said.

The Israeli army has not yet commented on the operation, nor is it clear what was the target of the attack on a small residential building in the village of Aito, near which the main strongholds of the Hezbollah armed group are not located.

A few hours earlier, at least four people were killed and several dozen injured in an Israeli attack on a hospital yard in the Gaza Strip, which caused a fire in a nearby refugee tent camp.

Israel said it targeted militants allegedly hiding among civilians in the attack, but did not provide evidence of this. Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted civilian shelters in previous months, citing the same reason for the attack.

The hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah was already overcrowded because it received the injured in the attack on the temporary shelter that was erected in the schoolyard, which killed at least 20 people yesterday.

This morning's attack damaged the hospital, but also affected a large number of refugee tents, after which secondary explosions were heard, which are suspected to have been caused by the explosion of a fuel tank.

Associated Press footage shows children among the wounded. Hospital records show that four people died and 40 were wounded. Twenty-five people were taken to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital said.

Israel continues to launch near-daily attacks across the Gaza Strip more than a year after the war began and is waging a major ground offensive in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.

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14: 18h

Israeli human rights organizations today called on the international community to prevent Israel from carrying out its controversial plan to subjugate and encircle the northern Gaza Strip, warning that it is already underway.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated to be around 400.000, to evacuate to the south, and has reportedly blocked aid entering the area since the beginning of this month.

This has sparked Palestinian fears that Israel intends to implement a plan drawn up by former generals to order all civilians out of the north and label those who remain as combatants.

It's a "surrender or starve" strategy that human rights groups say would violate international law.

In a statement, Israeli human rights organizations said there are worrying signs that Israel has already begun implementing the plan.

The statement was signed by the organizations Becelem, Giša, Yesh Din and Doctors for Human Rights-Israel.

It warns that states have the right to prevent the crime of starvation and forced transfer, reports Israeli media.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering the plan, which could, if implemented, leave hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without food and water who won't or can't leave their homes, the Associated Press reported.

Israel has issued many evacuation orders for residents of the north during the year-long war, the latest on Sunday.

The plan proposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli parliament by former generals will further increase the pressure.

There is no official decision to fully implement the so-called General Plan, so it is not clear how seriously it is being considered.

One unnamed official said parts of the plan were already being implemented, but did not say which.

Another official said Netanyahu had read and considered the plan, like many others that reached him during the war, but did not reveal that any part had been adopted.

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10: 37h

The High Commissioner of the European Union (EU) for foreign policy and security, Josep Borrell, announced, in response to Israel's targeting of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, that the EU condemns all attacks on United Nations missions.

"Such attacks against UN peacekeepers represent a serious violation of international law and are completely unacceptable. The EU condemns all attacks on UN missions," Borelj said in a statement last night.

It also expressed particularly "serious concern in relation to the attacks by the Israel Defense Forces on UNIFIL (the UN mission in Lebanon) in which several peacekeepers were wounded."

"We urgently await explanations and a thorough investigation by the Israeli authorities into the attacks on UNIFIL, which plays a fundamental role in the stability of southern Lebanon," the statement added.

Borelj said that it took a long time for the EU member states to condemn the Israeli attacks on UNIFIL members in Lebanon. He called those attacks "completely unacceptable", reports the agencies.

"We should be against Israeli attacks on UNIFIL. Our soldiers are there, many soldiers are there," Borelj said today at the EU ministerial meeting in Luxembourg.

EU countries, led by Italy, France and Spain, have thousands of soldiers in a peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon with a total of 10.000 members, including from Serbia.

She has repeatedly come under attack from Israeli forces in recent days. Israel called on the UN to move soldiers out of the combat zone.

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09: 53h

In an Israeli attack on the hospital yard in the Gaza Strip early this morning, at least four people were killed and more than 20 were seriously burned as the fire engulfed the crowded tents in which the displaced Palestinians took shelter.

The Israeli military said it was targeting extremists hiding among civilians, but did not provide evidence.

In recent months, the army has repeatedly attacked shelters and tents, claiming that fighters from the Palestinian movement Hamas are using them to carry out attacks.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza is full of wounded after an earlier airstrike on a nearby school-turned-shelter killed at least 20 people and gutted many tents.

In the Associated Press video, children can be seen among the wounded.

According to the hospital, four people were killed and 40 wounded in the new attack.

Twenty-five of them were taken to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, Al Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital said.

Israel has been carrying out almost daily attacks across Gaza for more than a year since the start of the war against the Palestinian Islamist Hamas, and is also conducting a ground operation in the north where it says the extremists have regrouped.

About 90 percent of Gaza's 2,3 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large parts of the territory on the Mediterranean coast have been completely destroyed.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400.000, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed food deliveries there since early October.

Hundreds of thousands of people from the north obeyed evacuation orders at the start of the war and were not allowed to return.

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09: 39h

Palestinian doctors announced today that at least ten people were killed and at least 30 were injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, and among the victims were women and children, Reuters reports.

08: 37h

More than 60 people were wounded in a drone attack in the northern Israeli city of Binyamin on Sunday.

Israeli soldiers in Binjamina near the place where the attack from Lebanon took place
Israeli soldiers in Binjamina near the place where the attack from Lebanon took placephoto: Reuters

Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the target was the Israel Defense Forces' Golan Brigade training camp in the area, located between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Hezbollah's media office said the attack was carried out in response to Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon and Beirut on Thursday.

Earlier on Sunday, Hezbollah reported launching rockets at Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military carried out airstrikes in Lebanon on Sunday amid a campaign against Hezbollah.

The United States of America (USA) has designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, while the European Union (EU) blacklists only its armed wing, not the political party, which has a seat in the Lebanese parliament. Hezbollah has supported Hamas, a Palestinian militant organization, since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli warplanes hit a 100-year-old mosque in a village near the border early Sunday, a day after targeting a market in the town of Nabatea, Lebanon's official news agency said.

The US said on Sunday it would send Israel the advanced THAAD anti-missile system and US troops to operate it in a bid to bolster the country's air defenses following missile attacks by Iran.

US President Joseph Biden said he was sending the system "to defend Israel".

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi warned on Sunday that the US was putting the lives of its soldiers at risk "by deploying them to operate US missile systems in Israel".

On October 1, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, amid an escalation in Lebanon's fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel is also carrying out strikes in the Gaza Strip to fight Hamas, which the US and EU consider a terrorist organization, and may strike Iran in retaliation for a rocket attack earlier this month.

Palestinian medical officials said Sunday that an Israeli strike killed a family of eight and wounded seven others in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military also said on Sunday that forces operating across the Gaza Strip had attacked around 24 targets and killed dozens of militants in the past 40 hours.

The war in the Gaza Strip began after Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing around 1.200 people and taking 250 hostages.

After that, Israel launched an offensive against Gaza. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 42.175 people died in the fighting. About 2,3 million people live in that Palestinian territory.

Change: 09:41 p.m
08: 26h

Four Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were seriously wounded on Sunday in the deadliest attack by the Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.

Hezbollah described the attack near the town of Binyamin as retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday, which killed 22 people.

It was later said that Israel's elite Golani Brigade was targeted, and that dozens of rockets were fired to activate Israel's anti-aircraft systems during the drone strike.

Israel's rescue service said 61 people were wounded in the attack. Since Israel has advanced air defense systems, it is rare for so many people to be wounded by drones and rockets.

Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged fire almost every day since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip a year ago, and the conflicts escalated after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese organization and top commander in Israeli strikes.

Israel launched a ground offensive into Lebanon this month in a bid to weaken Hezbollah and push the extremist organization further from the border to allow thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes.

In Gaza, an Israeli strike killed at least 20 people, including children, on Sunday evening, according to local hospitals. Some of the many Palestinians displaced by the war took refuge in the school in Nuseirat.

Early this morning, explosions rang out near the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Three people were killed and 50 were wounded, the hospital said. The tents were engulfed in fire and the residents of that place in central Gaza were carrying the wounded to the hospital.

The deadly attack by Hezbollah came on the same day that the United States of America (US) announced that it would send a new air defense system to Israel to bolster its defenses against missiles, and soldiers to operate it.

An Israeli military spokesman declined to say when that would happen.

The market from the Ottoman era in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh was destroyed in Israeli airstrikes last night, and at least one person was killed.

Israel is now at war with the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, organizations that are also backed by Iran and are expected to attack that country in response to an Iranian missile attack this month.

Iran has announced a response to any Israeli attack.

More than 1.400 people have been killed in Lebanon since September, according to data from Lebanon's health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.

At least 58 people were killed in rocket attacks on Israel, almost half of them soldiers.

The war in the Gaza Strip began on October 7 last year after an attack by Palestinian extremists on southern Israel, in which about 1.200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and more than 250 hostages were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.

About 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, and a third are believed to be dead.

In the Israeli bombing and ground offensive in Gaza, more than 42.000 Palestinians were killed, according to the data of the Ministry of Health there, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, but says that women and children are more than half of the victims.

Israel claims that 17.000 extremists were killed, but provides no evidence for this.

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