Israel expanded its targets in its war with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people in an airstrike in the north, health officials said, while millions of Israelis took shelter from projectiles fired back across the border.
So far the main focus of Israel’s military operations in Lebanon has been in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east and the suburbs of Beirut.
The strike in the Christian-majority town of Aitou hit a house that had been rented to displaced families, the town’s mayor Joseph Trad told Reuters. In addition to the deaths, eight people were injured, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Rescue workers at the site of the strike searched through piles of rubble on Monday, where burned vehicles and trees could be seen strewn across the ground.
Israel ordered residents of 25 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows some 60 km (35 miles) north of the Israeli frontier.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting a military base in central Israel where four soldiers were killed on Sunday by a Hezbollah drone strike, said Israel would continue to attack the Iran-backed movement “without mercy, everywhere in Lebanon – including Beirut”.
At the Masnaa border crossing with Syria, couple Jalal Ferhat and Amal Tefayeli and their five children were among those offloading belongings from buses, hoping to leave Lebanon.
“There are strikes in our neighbourhood and destruction, and they (Israeli forces) hit near my house,” said Ferhat, 40, from Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold in eastern Lebanon. “I have children, you can’t just stay where you are.”
Reuters
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