Israeli strikes in Lebanon kill 40 while ‘unlawful’ Gaza response expands

Israeli strikes in eastern Lebanon have killed 40 people, according to the country’s health ministry.

The strikes also wounded 53 more people around the eastern city of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley on Wednesday, as Israel’s operation against the Hezbollah militant group continues.

The Israeli military has not commented.

More than 3,000 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon in the past year, but most deaths have happened over the past six weeks as violence between the Iran-backed militants and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) escalated.

Late on Wednesday and earlier on Thursday, further strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate several locations.

This morning, one large airstrike hit a site next to Lebanon’s only international airport. Israel said there were Hezbollah facilities there, without giving more details.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a speech aired on Wednesday that the Lebanese militant group is open for ceasefire negotiations only once “the enemy stops its aggression”.

More attacks in northern Gaza

Meanwhile, what has been a year-long relentless military campaign on the besieged enclave of Gaza raged on with more attacks on the north.

Israel’s ground operation in the region – said to be aimed at stopping Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping – has extended to a town that has been heavily bombed since the earliest days of the war.

The military said in a statement on Thursday that “troops started to operate” in the area of Beit Lahiya after intelligence indicated the presence of militants there.

Israel launched another major offensive in nearby Jabaliya, a decades-old urban refugee camp, in early October.

It has sharply restricted the amount of aid entering northern Gaza and ordered a full evacuation.

Tens of thousands have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest mass displacement of the war.

‘Absolute despair’

The war in Gaza, launched on 8 October last year following Hamas’s attack into southern Israel, has so far claimed the lives of more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

Israel has been criticised by the Norwegian Refugee Council after its secretary general, Jan Egeland, visited northern and central Gaza and said the IDF’s campaign is “in no way a lawful” response to the 7 October attacks last year – when 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel and 250 were taken hostage by Hamas.

Mr Egeland described the situation as “worse than anything I could imagine as a long-time aid worker”.

“What I saw and heard in the north of Gaza was a population pushed beyond breaking point,” he added.

“Families torn apart, men and boys detained and separated from their loved ones, and families unable to even bury their dead. Some have gone days without food, drinking water is nowhere to be found.

“It is scene after scene of absolute despair.”

Mr Egeland continued: “The families, widows and children I have spoken to are enduring suffering almost unparalleled anywhere in recent history.

“There is no possible justification for continued war and destruction. To avert tens of thousands of additional innocent lives lost, we need an immediate cease-fire, release of the hostages and those arbitrarily detained and the start of a real peace process.”