Beirut: Amid heightening tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, an Israeli strike targeting the militant group struck a residential building in the city of Nabatieh city in southern Lebanon, killing at least 10 people, including two children, as per local news agency. The victims were all Syrian citizens and DNA tests are being conducted to determine the identity of the victims.
The Israeli military said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot used by Hezbollah militants. The strike came after ceasefire talks between Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Israel in Doha paused on Friday with negotiators due to meet again next week.
The strike on Wadi al-Kfour in Nabatieh province is among the deadliest in Lebanon since Hezbollah and Israeli military started trading strikes on October 8, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel and sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Hezbollah maintains that it will stop its attacks once a ceasefire is reached in the Gaza Strip.
Among the dead were a woman and her two children, the ministry said. Five others were wounded, two of whom were in critical condition. Mohammad Shoaib, who runs a slaughterhouse in Wadi al-Kfour, said the area struck was an “industrial and civilian area” that contained factories producing bricks, metal, and aluminium, as well as a dairy farm.
Hussein Shahoud, the uncle of three of the people killed in the strike said they were factory workers who were in their housing accommodation when they were hit. He denied that there were weapons at the facility. “There was nothing at all like that,” Shahoud said. “There was metal for construction, for building, for all kinds of purposes.”
Tensions have soared in the region in recent weeks, after a rocket strike blamed on Hezbollah killed 12 children and teens in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel responded with the killing of a top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in the suburbs of Beirut. Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, as has Iran for the killing in Tehran of the political chief of the Palestinian Hamas group, Ismail Haniyeh.
More than 500 people have been killed in exchanges since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also including around 100 civilians and noncombatants. In Israel, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed.
(agencies)
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