BARJA, Lebanon (Reuters) -Lebanese rescuers scoured a destroyed apartment building south of Beirut on Wednesday for bodies or any survivors after a deadly Israeli strike the previous evening, as exchanges of fire between Israel and armed group Hezbollah pressed on.
Hezbollah said it had fired a salvo of missiles on Wednesday at an Israeli military base near Ben Gurion Airport. Sirens sounded in northern and central Israel and Israeli media reported a rocket had landed near the airport.
The airports authority said it was continuing to operate as usual and Israel’s leading airline El Al said none of its planes were damaged from rockets hitting near central Israel.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged hostilities for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war but fighting has significantly escalated since late September, with Israeli troops intensifying bombing on swathes of Lebanon’s south and making ground incursions into border villages.
The strike on Tuesday on Barja hit a multi-storey apartment building on a hilltop, shearing off segments of the floors and exposing inner walls and staircases.
Lebanon’s health ministry said just before midnight that the strike had killed 20 people and wounded 14, but said the toll could still rise.
Moussa Zahran, who lived on one of the upper floors of the building, returned on Wednesday morning to sift through the ruins of his home. His burned feet were wrapped in gauze and his son and wife were in hospital after being wounded in the strike.
“These rocks that you see here weigh 100 kilos, they fell on a 13 kilo kid,” he said, referring to his son and the apartment wall that had collapsed onto him during the strike.
STRIKES ON NABATIEH
It was not immediately clear if the strike was targeting a member of Hezbollah. There was no evacuation warning ahead of the air raid.
On Wednesday, Israel’s military carried out strikes on the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh after issuing evacuation orders for specific neighbourhoods in the city. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last year, the vast majority in the past six weeks. The Barja attack was among the deadliest single strikes.
Diplomatic efforts to reach a 60-day truce proposed by the U.S. faltered last week, and Lebanese were fearful that the war could escalate further after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Israel Katz as his new defence minister.
Katz vowed on Tuesday to “defeat” Hezbollah so that people displaced from northern Israel could return home.
Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri – a Hezbollah ally and diplomatic interlocutor – met the U.S. and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon on Wednesday to discuss political developments, his office said, without providing further details.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister meanwhile congratulated the “president elect” in the U.S., without naming Donald Trump.
Netanyahu hailed Trump’s election, while senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump would be tested on his statements that he can stop the Gaza war in hours as president.
(Reporting by Aziz Taher and Hassan Hankir in Barja; Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily; Writing by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Ros Russell, William Maclean)
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