51 killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon
Lebanon said 51 people were killed and more than 220 injured in Israeli strikes Wednesday, including two rare strikes in mountain areas outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds in the south and east.
An Israeli strike on the village of Joun in the Chouf mountains, southeast of Beirut, killed at least four people.
Another Israeli strike killed at least three people in Maaysra -- a Shiite-majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area about 25 kilometers north of Beirut.
At least nine people were killed in Israeli strikes in the south, the ministry said, including three in Ain Qana, where thirteen people were also wounded and at least seven people were killed in eastern Lebanon, raising Wednesday's casualty toll to 51 dead and more than 200 wounded.
The Israeli military said it was carrying out "extensive" air strikes in south Lebanon and the eastern Beqaa Valley and that it hit more than 280 targets after Hezbollah fired a ballistic missile that reached the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time before being intercepted. It claimed that its warplanes struck 60 Hezbollah intelligence targets on Wednesday.
"Today (Wednesday), guided by the intelligence directorate, fighter jets struck 60 terrorist targets belonging to Hezbollah's intelligence directorate," a military statement said, adding the strikes destroyed "intelligence-gathering tools" and "command centers".
Israeli strikes targeted Nabatiyeh, al-Addousiyeh, Adloun, al-Hoshh, al-Zahrani, al-Jmayjmeh, Haris, Ansariyeh, Bablieh, Ghassaniyeh and many other regions in south and east Lebanon, including a strike on the outskirts of Shtoura near Zahle.
Israel's army said it was conducting strikes in the Nabatiyeh region, with the National News Agency reporting an Israeli strike had partly damaged a hospital there.
Nabatiyeh Governor Howaida Turk told AFP that the region's "only government hospital sustained damage as a result of the nearby strike", adding that no one had been injured.
Longtime foes Hezbollah and Israel have been locked in near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, sparking war in Gaza.
The focus of Israel's firepower has shifted sharply from Gaza to Lebanon in recent days.
On Monday, Israel launched devastating strikes across Lebanon's south and east, killing more than 550 people according to the health ministry -- the deadliest single-day toll since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.
The attacks came after coordinated explosions of communication devices killed 39 people and wounded thousands on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.
Those were followed by a deadly strike on Friday on south Beirut, with leading Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Akil among the dead.
Source: Agence France Presse
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