Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon killed 100 people including children on Monday, according to the Lebanese health ministry, in the largest cross-border escalation since war erupted in Gaza on October 7.
War began when Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out the worst-ever attack on Israel, with Iran-backed groups around the region, chiefly Hezbollah, increasingly drawn into the violence.
On Monday, Israel said it had hit more than 300 Hezbollah sites with dozens of strikes, while Hezbollah said that it had targeted three sites in northern Israel.
The strikes on Lebanon, which also wounded more than 400 people according to the health ministry, were the deadliest in nearly a year of violence along the border with Israel.
“Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning… killed 100 and injured more than 400,” the health ministry said in a statement, adding that “children, women and paramedics” were among the dead and wounded.
World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply from Israel’s southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon in recent days.
“We sleep and wake up to bombardment… That’s what our life has become,” said Wafaa Ismail, 60, a housewife from the south Lebanon village of Zawtar.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would “go on for the near future”.
Hagari said Israel’s military “will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon”.
The post Lebanon says 100 dead in Israeli strikes on Hezbollah strongholds appeared first on DailyNews.