The Albany Gazette - Israel strikes kill 22 in Lebanon as Hezbollah targets south Israel

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported at least 12 strikes, some of them "very violent", on Beirut's southern suburbs throughout Thursday, targeting districts including Shiyah, Hadath and Haret Hreik, with a raid on the Kafaat neighbourhood destroying a building and damaging others nearby.

The health ministry in separate statements said "Israeli enemy" strikes on five areas in east Lebanon's Baalbek region killed a total of 22 people, with the NNA reporting a strike on the village of Maqneh that left at least four members of the same family dead.

Israeli first responders said a man was killed on Thursday after rocket fire from Lebanon hit the Galilee region in Israel's north.

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee on social media platform X issued several rounds of evacuation warnings for Beirut's southern suburbs, as well as areas in and around the southern coastal city of Tyre, where the NNA reported Israeli strikes. There were no warnings for east Lebanon.

AFPTV footage showed columns of smoke rising from the southern suburbs, usually a densely populated residential district but now largely emptied.

Adraee said on X that the Israeli military "targeted a weapons depot, a command headquarters and terrorist infrastructure" belonging to Hezbollah in south Beirut.

- Khiam -

Amid a series of attack claims, Hezbollah said its fighters targeted "the Hatzor air base" near Israel's southern city of Ashdod, around 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Lebanon's southern border, "with a missile salvo" -- its deepest target in more than a year of hostilities.

In seven separate statements, Iran-backed Hezbollah said its fighters also targeted Israeli troops in and near the south Lebanon town of Khiam, including with artillery, rockets and drones.

The NNA said "the enemy army" was "blowing up homes and residential buildings during its incursion into the town".

Lebanon's official news agency and Hezbollah have reported fighting and air strikes in the Khiam area ever since Israeli ground troops first entered Lebanon on September 30, a week after Israel escalated its air raids against Hezbollah targets.

The renewed Israeli strikes on Beirut's southern suburbs came after relative calm in the capital while United States envoy Amos Hochstein visited this week, seeking to broker an end to the almost two-month-long Israel-Hezbollah war.

Lebanon's health ministry said Thursday that at least 3,583 people had been killed in the violence since October 2023.

Most of the deaths have been since September this year.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that three soldiers, including a 70-year-old, were killed in south Lebanon, bringing to 52 the number killed in Lebanon since the start of ground operations.

(P.Clark--TAG)