Israeli Strike on Lebanon Kills at Least 10

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

******** Strike on Lebanon ****** at Least 10

An ******** airstrike hit a factory in a small town in southern Lebanon, ******** at least 10 civilians, Lebanese officials said on Saturday, as people across the Middle East uneasily awaited reprisals against ******* by Iran and its allies for a pair of assassinations.

*******’s military said it had targeted a weapons warehouse used by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, in the strike overnight on Friday. But the mayor of the town of Toul, where the ******* took place, disputed that account.

The strike appeared to have destroyed the factory and an adjacent structure that were inhabited by Syrian refugees who worked there, as well as their families. Reporters who visited the site saw steel beams but no signs of weaponry.

The mayor of Toul, Saeed Mahmoud, said in a phone interview that the factory was used to collect steel spare parts.

The ****** toll was one of the largest so far in Lebanon amid the near-daily exchange of border attacks with ******* in the 10 months since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah fighters and other Iran-backed militants have been attacking ******* in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, leading to months of cross-border ***** by both sides.

The tensions have escalated sharply in recent weeks following the killings of Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, and Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of ******, groups allied with Iran. Hezbollah and Iran have vowed to retaliate more forcefully than before against *******, leaving the Middle East on tenterhooks for more than two weeks.

The Biden administration has led a renewed diplomatic push for a Gaza cease-*****, which U.S. and regional officials hope will prompt Iran and its allies to curb any retaliation and avert a wider regional war. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was scheduled to travel to ******* on Saturday to help facilitate the talks, which are being mediated by the ******* States, Egypt and Qatar.

On Saturday, *******’s cease-***** negotiations team briefed Benjamin Netanyahu, the ******** prime minister, on two days of talks in Qatar that ended on Friday. The security chiefs who participated in the negotiations expressed “cautious optimism” about the ability to move toward an agreement, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

All of the people ******* in the strike on Toul, near the southern city of Nabatiye, were Syrian refugees and included a woman and her two children, said the Lebanese health minister, Dr. Firass Abiad.

More than a million Syrian refugees fled to Lebanon to escape a long-running civil war at home that began in 2011. Syrian laborers often live with their families where they work.

On Saturday afternoon, ******** drones circled above the remnants of the destroyed factory. Next door, a collapsed concrete building held what appeared to be the sleeping quarters of the workers and their families. The broken concrete and the metal rebar that once supported the structure were strewed with clothing and the broken plastic of a child’s car seat.

One laborer was ******* where he was sleeping along with his wife and two children, according to rescue workers who dug them out of the rubble. At least six other laborers were ******* in the strike and two were wounded, the rescue workers said.

The ******** military said it was looking into the claim that civilians were harmed in the *******.

Hezbollah’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened in July to hit new targets in ******* if it continued to target civilians in Lebanon. In response to the latest *******, Hezbollah said it fired a barrage of rockets at Ayelet Hashachar, a kibbutz in northern *******.

The ******** military said roughly 55 rockets crossed into ******** territory, some of which ignited fires. There were no immediate reports of casualties. An ******** soldier was severely wounded in a separate rocket ******* from Lebanon on Saturday morning, the military said.

For months, ******* and Lebanon have appeared to carefully calibrate their attacks in an attempt to avoid a wider escalation.

Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets and drones at northern ******* in solidarity with ******, which led the massive surprise ******* on ******* on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza.

******* has responded to attacks from Lebanon with bombardments that have ******* more than 500 people, most of them Hezbollah fighters, according to figures from the Lebanese health ministry, Hezbollah and the ******* Nations.

But after a rocket ******* from Lebanon in late July that ******* 12 children and teenagers in the ********-controlled Golan Heights, ******* ******* Mr. Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s highest-ranking military commanders, in an apartment in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hours later, an ********** widely attributed to ******* ******* Mr. Haniyeh, the leader of ******’s political bureau, who was staying in a closely guarded state guesthouse in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to attend the inauguration of a new Iranian president. ******* never publicly confirmed its involvement.

Iran and its ally Hezbollah have pledged to avenge the killings. But U.S., Iranian and ******** officials said on Friday that Iran had decided to delay any reprisals against ******* to allow mediators to continue working toward a cease-***** in Gaza.

High-level talks in Qatar on a truce and the release of the 115 hostages still held by ****** and its allies in Gaza ended without an immediate breakthrough on Friday. But the ******* States, Egypt and Qatar said the negotiations would go on next week in Cairo, as mediators raced to try to secure a deal.

Even as senior officials have shuttled from capital to capital in an attempt to end the war, the fighting in Gaza has gone on. About 15 members of a single family, including children, were ******* when their house was bombarded, according to the ************ civil defense agency.

******** aircraft struck dozens of sites across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the ******** military said on Saturday, and ground troops swept through parts of the southern city of Khan Younis, already devastated in an earlier ********.

The ******** military again ordered Palestinians to flee parts of central Gaza that ******* had previously designated a “humanitarian zone” for many of the nearly two million Gazans who have been displaced during the war.

Avichay Adraee, an ******** military spokesman, said ****** and other militant groups had repeatedly fired rockets from the area.

Many Gazans have been displaced multiple times by the war. Aid groups say there is still nowhere safe for them to go, as ******* has vowed to target ****** wherever it believes the organization is operating.

“Many of the thousands of families affected only recently arrived in the area, after other displacement orders in Khan Younis,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency that aids ************ refugees.

Gazans are “trapped in an endless nightmare,” she said.

Hwaida Saad, Victoria Kim and ***** Abdulrahim contributed reporting.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#******** #Strike #Lebanon #******

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

For verified travel tips and real support, visit: https://hopzone.eu/