Synopsis
Israeli airstrikes have devastated Gaza, claiming the lives of at least 50 people, including women and children. The strikes targeted various locations, including Beit Lahia and the Bureij refugee camp. Simultaneously, Israel launched attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, resulting in fatalities and escalating tensions between the two nations.
AgenciesStrikes by the Israeli military killed dozens in Gaza on Sunday, the civil defence said, while also hitting a Hezbollah stronghold near Beirut’s international airport.
In the latest violence in the besieged Palestinian territory, the civil defence agency said Israeli air raids killed at least 50 people.
The deadliest strike, in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia in the north, killed 30 people, including women and children, and left at least 59 others buried under the rubble, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Another strike killed 10 people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where a separate strike on a house claimed the life of a woman, he said. An Israeli drone strike killed five people in the southern city of Rafah, Bassal said, adding another strike killed three women and a child in the Nuseirat camp.
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846. The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures, which the United Nations considers reliable.
On Israel’s second front in the north, AFPTV footage showed several strikes hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold. Further south, overnight Israeli air strikes and shelling hit the flashpoint town of Khiam, the Lebanese state-run National News Agency reported.
Israeli forces also shelled the southern area of Lebanon along the Litani River, the NNA said on Sunday.
In Lebanon’s east, the health ministry said an Israeli strike in the Bekaa Valley killed six people including three children.
Meanwhile, a Lebanese security source said Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif was killed in an Israeli strike Sunday in central Beirut that hit the Lebanese branch of the Syrian Baath party.
Ali Hijazi, secretary-general of the Lebanese branch of the Baath party, “confirmed the death of Hezbollah media official” Afif, NNA reported.
Israel has escalated its bombing of Lebanon since September 23 and has since sent in ground troops, following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Hezbollah militants in support of Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.
Its military on Saturday said Hezbollah had already “paid a big price”, but vowed to keep fighting until tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the north can return home.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,452 people have been killed since October last year, with most casualties recorded since September.