Israeli atrocities on eastern Lebanon kill 23 Syrians

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said the fatalities, most of them women and children, occurred on Thursday after an Israeli raid on a three-story building housing Syrian refugees in the town of Yunin near the city of Baalbek in northern Bekaa Valley.

The agency quoted Ali Kassas, mayor of Yunin, as saying that the bodies of 23 Syrian citizens were pulled from under the rubble, adding that four Syrians and four Lebanese were also wounded.

The Lebanese Red Cross said it recovered nine bodies, while others were recovered by the Hezbollah resistance group’s paramedic service and the Lebanese Civil Defense.

The NNA added that 11 Lebanese people were also killed and nine others wounded in the town of Karak in the Zahle district in Bekaa.

It was one of the deadliest single strikes by Israel in Lebanon since the exchange of fire between the regime and Hezbollah over the past months.

Earlier in the day, Israeli warplanes also launched a series of intensive raids on the southern Lebanese cities of Tyre, Dibba, Bidayas and Bazourieh, leaving a number of casualties.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health said in a statement, "The Israeli enemy's attacks today on the town of Aita al-Shaab in southern Lebanon led to the martyrdom of three people."

Hezbollah announced in separate statements that it had carried out retaliatory strikes by targeting Rafael's military industrial complexes in the Zovulon area north of the city of Haifa with salvos of rockets. The Lebanese resistance group also bombarded the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Motzkin with barrages of missiles.

The Israeli military claimed on Thursday it had hit around 75 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon overnight, including ammunition depots of the Lebanese resistance group.

The latest strikes come as the United States, France and several Western and Arab allies have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in the escalating conflict between Hezbollah and Israel while also expressing support for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip following intense discussions at the United Nations on Wednesday.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed hope that a ceasefire could be reached soon and welcomed the call for a truce but said the key to its implementation is whether Israel, which has been moving troops closer to Lebanon, is committed to enforcing international resolutions.

Hezbollah said on Wednesday that it had targeted the headquarters of the Israeli spy agency Mossad near Tel Aviv with an advanced ballistic missile in response to the recent pager explosions and the assassination of top commanders of the popular group.

The Lebanese resistance movement had a day earlier fired 50 rockets at the Dado base, the headquarters of the Northern Command of the Israeli military, located northwest the occupied city of Safad, just 12 kilometers from Lebanon’s border.

Hezbollah and Israel have been involved in fierce fire exchanges since early October last year, shortly after the regime launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip following a surprise operation by the Palestinian resistance groups.

On Wednesday, 72 people were killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon, bringing the death toll to 620 since Monday.

The new attacks came less than a week after the regime killed 38 people, including three children and seven women as well as Ibrahim Aqil, another one of Hezbollah’s senior commanders, in an attack on a residential building in a southern Beirut suburb.

A couple of days earlier, it had also detonated thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkie radios across the country, killing at least 39 people and wounding 3,000 others.

The Lebanese resistance movement has vowed to keep up its retaliatory attacks as long as the Israeli regime continues its Gaza war, which has so far killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.