BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 21 people died on Monday in a rare Israeli strike on a northern Christian-majority village, far from Hezbollah strongholds, with DNA tests being conducted to identify body parts.

A Lebanese security official said the building “housed families displaced from Lebanon’s south, and was targeted shortly after a man had arrived in a car”.

“The Israeli enemy strike on the village of Aito… killed in a preliminary toll 21 people and injured eight. DNA tests are being conducted to determine the identity of body parts recovered at the strike site,” the ministry said, referring to a village in the Christian-majority Zgharta district. The official National News Agency said Israel targeted a “residential apartment” in the village.

A photographer at the site of the strike said it had levelled a residential building at the entrance to the village. Body parts were scattered in the rubble, with Red Cross volunteers searching for survivors in the wreckage while ambulances evacuated the wounded.

Hezbollah drone kills four Israeli soldiers at a northern base

The Lebanese army imposed a security cordon in the area, where the strike also sparked a fire, he said.

In another strike outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds, on Saturday the health ministry reported two dead and four wounded in an Israeli strike on Deir Billa, about 15 kilometres from the town of Batroun on Lebanon’s north coast.

Hezbollah’s retaliation

Israel’s military said a Hezbollah drone killed four soldiers at one of its northern bases on Sunday, as it expanded its bombardments of Lebanon and troops battled militants across the border.

The attack on a military training camp in Binyamina, near Haifa, was the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since Sep 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded. Hezbollah said that it launched “a squadron of attack drones” at the Binyamina camp, around 30 kilometres south of the major city of Haifa.

The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut. In a later statement, Hezbollah warned Israel that “what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our noble and dear people”.

An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted “over 60 wounded people” with injuries ranging from mild to critical.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2024