Israeli military strikes in Lebanon, Gaza kill dozens of people

The Israeli military carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon Wednesday on what it said were Hezbollah weapons storage facilities after a drone strike earlier in the day killed one person and wounded several others, including students on a bus.

The new strikes came as tensions between Israel and Lebanon are escalating. An airstrike Tuesday night killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, in southern Lebanon. It was the deadliest Israeli attack reported since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.  

Meanwhile, hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 21 Palestinians.

Israel claims Hezbollah is regrouping

The Israeli military warned Wednesday afternoon it would strike targets in several villages in southern Lebanon, describing them as Hezbollah infrastructure, and called on people to move away from the locations. More than an hour later, the strikes began in the villages of Shehour and Deir Kifa. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Israel’s military said Hezbollah was working to reestablish itself and rebuild its capacity in southern Lebanon, without providing evidence. It said the weapons’ facilities targeted were embedded among civilians and violated understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Israel agreed to a ceasefire and withdrew from southern Lebanon last year. For its part, Lebanon agreed to quell Hezbollah activity in the area.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on a car in the southern Lebanese village of Tiri killed one person and wounded 11, including students aboard a nearby bus, the Lebanese Health Ministry and state media said. State-run National News Agency said the school bus happened to be passing near the car that was hit. The bus driver and several students were wounded, the report said.

The Israeli military later said it killed a Hezbollah operative in the drone strike.

In Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, just outside the port city of Sidon, life appeared normal Wednesday, but Lebanese authorities prevented journalists from entering. At the scene of the strike, paramedics searched for human remains around a wall that was stained with blood. Several cars were burnt and broken glass and debris littered the ground.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever it operates.

Hamas condemned the attack and denied in a statement that the sports playground that was hit was its training compound.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas. The war killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.

Israeli strikes kill 21 in Gaza

Hospitals in Gaza said at least 21 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes Wednesday on both sides of the yellow line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits the enclave in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.

Officials at al-Ahli, Shifa, Nasser and Kuwaiti hospitals reported they received the bodies of those killed from Gaza City, Khan Younis and the Muwasi area, the southern Gaza displacement camp. An Israeli strike also killed one person in Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood outside the safe zone where Israeli forces remain deployed.

The Israeli military said its strikes responded to militants who had opened fire on Israeli forces in Khan Younis earlier in the day. It said no soldiers were killed.

Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect on Oct. 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, though they have not stopped entirely. The ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, has reported 280 deaths since the truce began, an average of more than seven per day. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages — dead or alive — to Israel.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council approved a U.S. plan for Gaza that authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security in the territory and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state. The vote was a crucial next step for the fragile ceasefire and efforts to outline Gaza’s future after two years of war.

Hamas, however, criticized the U.N.’s adoption of the plan, saying, “Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation,” according to Reuters.

“Any international force, if established, must be stationed solely on the borders to separate the forces and monitor the ceasefire, and must be entirely under the supervision of the United Nations,” Hamas said, according to Al Jazeera.