Israeli strike in northern Lebanon kills at least 21 people
UNB
Publish: 15 Oct 2024, 02:22 PM
AITO,
Oct 15 (AP/UNB) - An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in northern
Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red
Cross.
The Israeli military did
not immediately comment and the target was not clear. 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. Nearby buildings and cars were 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 wounded in the
attack, vowing "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.
A strike and an inferno
in a Gaza hospital courtyard
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 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 Biden administration
called the strike on Al Aqsa Martyr's Hospital "deeply disturbing"
and said it has expressed concerns about it to the Israeli government.
"Israel has a
responsibility to do more to avoid civilian casualties - and what happened here
is horrifying, even if Hamas was operating near the hospital in an attempt to
use civilians as human shields," the White House National Security Council
said in a statement.
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.
Israeli rights groups
warn of forced transfer in northern Gaza
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.
End/UNB/AP/MB