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08-11-2024
BEIRUT: First responders have recovered the bodies of 30 people killed in an Israeli air strike on an apartment building south of Beirut, Lebanon’s Civil Defence agency says.
Tuesday evening’s attack destroyed one side of the four-storey building that was reportedly housing displaced people in the predominantly Sunni Muslim coastal town of Barja and sparked a fire.
The Israeli military said it struck “terror infrastructure” belonging to the Shia armed group Hezbollah.
Another 40 people were killed in Israeli strikes around the eastern governorates of Baalbek and Bekaa on Wednesday, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Lebanon’s culture minister also said one of the strikes had seriously damaged an Ottoman-era building in the vicinity of the Roman ruins in the city of Baalbek, which is a Unesco World Heritage site.
An Israeli military official said its strikes in the Baalbek area had targeted Hezbollah operatives.
Meanwhile, a rocket fired by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon killed an Israeli man near a kibbutz in northern Israel, paramedics said.
In Barja, a man who lived on one of the upper floors of the apartment building that was hit said his son and wife were injured by falling masonry.
“These rocks that you see here weigh 100kg, they fell on a 13kg kid,” Moussa Zahran told Reuters news agency as he surveyed the damage.
“I removed [the rocks] and… handed my son to the civil defence through the window. I carried my wife and came downstairs and got out behind the building… I thank God, glory be to Him, for this miracle.”
An Irish Times correspondent cited a member of the civil defence at the scene as saying that those killed whose bodies were found complete included seven women and three children, a seven-month-old baby and two girls aged seven and 12.
Neighbours also said the building was housing displaced people who had fled from other areas, she added.
There was no evacuation warning ahead of the strike, according to Reuters.
The Lebanese health ministry gave a preliminary death toll of 20 from the strike on Barja late on Tuesday but did not provide an updated figure on Wednesday.
On Wednesday evening, the ministry said 40 people had been killed and 53 others injured in a series of Israeli strikes in Bekaa and Baalbek governorates, which make up most of the eastern Bekaa Valley. They included 16 people killed in the village of Nasriyah and 11 in Baalbek city, it added.
Lebanese Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada also told the director-general of Unesco that one of the strikes had “caused serious damage to the ancient Manshiya building” in Baalbek city, which he said dated back to the Ottoman period and was located in the vicinity of the ruins of several Roman temples.
“The destruction of this exceptional monument next to a Unesco World Heritage site is an irremediable loss for Lebanon and for world heritage,” he warned.
Journalists also reported that the famous 19th Century Palmyra Hotel near the Roman ruins was damaged by nearby strikes, which the health ministry said killed two people.
An Israeli military official said its aircraft had carried out strikes based on precise intelligence indicating the presence of Hezbollah operatives in the Baalbek area.
Lebanese media also reported new strikes in the southern city of Nabatieh and Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday afternoon, after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate areas around several buildings. (Int’l News Desk)
