The strike marks the latest in a series of deadly escalations as tensions flare along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Five people were killed in an Israeli air strike on the municipal building in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Wednesday. A Lebanese official said Israel carried out 11 air strikes on Nabatiyeh and surrounding areas, days after strikes destroyed the southern city’s marketplace.
Smoke billows during Israeli airstrikes in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh on October 16, 2024.
The Israeli enemy raid… on two buildings, that of the Nabatiyeh municipality and the union of municipalities, killed five people in a preliminary toll,” the ministry said in a statement.
The town’s mayor was among those killed in the strike, reported Reuters quoting security sources.
Rescue operations were ongoing, with emergency teams searching for survivors trapped under the debris.
The strike marks the latest in a series of deadly escalations as tensions flare along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israeli air raids in southern Lebanon have intensified as the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza spills into neighbouring territories, raising fears of a broader regional war.
The United States has expressed concern over the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and adopted a harsher tone. On Tuesday, US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Washington had conveyed its concerns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government on the recent strikes.
“When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we were opposed to,” Miller said.
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Summary:
- An Israeli air strike on a municipal building in Nabatieh, a major town in southern Lebanon that serves as a provincial capital, killed at least six people including the mayor, two security sources said.
- Israel also launched a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut for the first time in six days, shortly after issuing an evacuation order for a building in the area.
- The Israeli military said that 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon in the early hours of Wednesday, with debris “identified” in northern Israel.
- The UN‘s special envoy to Yemen warned that the country could wind up being dragged into the escalating conflict in the Middle East due to the Houthi rebels’ repeated attacks on international shipping.
- More than 42,409 Palestinians have been killed and 99,153 wounded in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since October 7, 2023 according to the Gaza health ministry.