Marjayoun. The Lebanese Ministry of Health has confirmed the death of at least 492 people and more than 1,200 injured in the wave of Israeli bombings this Monday.
“The toll of today’s Israeli bombings in the Bekaa region and southern Lebanon has increased to 492 dead and 1,246 injured,” according to a statement from the Ministry reported by the newspaper ‘L’Orient-Le Jour’. The balance includes 24 minors and 42 women.
The Israeli Armed Forces have confirmed attacks on 1,300 “Hezbollah targets” in Lebanon in an operation that remains active. The main objective was weapons stored in homes.
In these warehouses there were “cruise missiles with hundreds of kilometers of range, heavy rockets with a warhead of one thousand kilograms of explosive, medium-range rockets of up to 200 kilometers, short-range rockets and armed unmanned aerial vehicles,” explained the military spokesman, Daniel Hagari.
The Israeli spokesman has assured that many of the death tolls include “many terrorists that we killed today who were close to the weapons” and has stated that they will give their own figures soon.
In retaliation for these attacks, the Hezbollah militia has launched at least 156 projectiles into Israeli territory. Most of these rockets have been launched against areas inside Israel, far from the border, such as the Haifa region, with no reports of personal injuries at the moment.
In fact, among them are at least ten long-range projectiles launched against Israeli settlements in the West Bank, more than 100 kilometers from the Lebanese border. Another 25 have been dropped on the Golan Heights, the part of Syria militarily occupied by Israel.
Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad added that “thousands of families from the attacked areas have been displaced.” In addition, 5,000 people were injured “in less than a week” by the Israeli attacks.
Thousands of Lebanese have fled from the south, and the main highway out of the southern port city of Sidon was jammed with cars heading to Beirut, in the biggest exodus since the 2006 fighting. More More than 700 people were injured in the attacks, a staggering one-day figure for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communications devices last week.
The Israeli military announced it attacked some 300 targets on Monday, saying it would go after Hezbollah weapons sites. Some attacks occurred in residential areas of cities in the south and east of the Bekaa Valley. One of the impacts hit a forested area as far away as Byblos in central Lebanon, more than 80 miles from the border north of Beirut.
The military said it was expanding airstrikes to include areas of the valley along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria. Hezbollah has long had an established presence in the valley, and is where the group was founded in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reiterated warnings urging residents to immediately evacuate areas where Hezbollah is stockpiling weapons, including in the valley.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said in a statement that it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli military post in the Galilee. It also attacked the facilities of the defense firm Rafael, based in Haifa, for the second day.
As Israel carried out the attacks, Israeli authorities reported a series of air raid sirens in northern Israel warning of incoming rocket fire from Lebanon.
The evacuation warnings were the first of their kind in nearly a year of steadily escalating conflict and came after a particularly intense exchange of gunfire on Sunday. Hezbollah launched about 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for attacks that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters.
There was no sign of an immediate exodus from villages in southern Lebanon, and the warning left open the possibility that some residents could live in or near attacked structures without knowing they were in danger.
The growing attacks and counterattacks have raised fears of an all-out war, even as Israel continues to fight Hamas in Gaza and try to return dozens of hostages taken in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Hezbollah has vowed to continue its attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group. Israel says it is committed to returning calm to its northern border.
Israel unleashed its most widespread wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah, killing at least 100 people, as cross-border attacks between the two sides continue to rise. Via Graphic News
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– 2024-09-28 15:15:05
