AP – The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said new explosions hit its headquarters, injuring two peacekeepers a day after Israeli forces targeted the same position and struck central Beirut.
Lebanon’s crisis response unit announced on Friday that 60 people were killed and 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, raising the total toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,229 killed and 10,380 wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
At least eight people were killed in intensified airstrikes across villages in southern and eastern Lebanon on Friday evening, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
An Israeli airstrike on Baysarieh, a village in Sidon province, killed three people, including a two-year-old and a 16-year-old, and injured three others, the Health Ministry said.
In Baalbeck-Hermel province, located in the Bekaa Valley, five more people were killed and five others wounded in additional airstrikes.
The casualty toll was notably higher than previous days, with 22 people killed and 117 wounded in two Israeli strikes on two locations in central Beirut. The strike caused the collapse of two residential buildings housing families and displaced individuals.
The crisis response unit report also recorded 57 airstrikes and incidents of shelling.
Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border, after a year of exchanges of fire between the two rivals. Israel is now at war with Hamas in Gaza and Hamas’ ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say women and children make up more than half of the fatalities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90 per cent of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
It’s been a full year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed into army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. They are still holding about 100 captives inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
