Beirut- The Israeli Air Force carried out more strikes on Tuesday against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including in the densely populated neighborhoods south of Beirut, after hundreds of people were killed the previous day in the deadliest barrage of Israeli attacks there in decades.
Two days of relentless air raids by Israeli fighter jets on Lebanon have killed 558 people, including 50 children and 94 women, according to the Lebanese health ministry. Thousands more have been injured. Hezbollah has responded by firing nearly 200 rockets deep inside Israel.
One strike Tuesday near Beirut, in the densely populated Dahiya neighbourhood, hit a six-story building and sent a plume of smoke above the Lebanese capital. Lebanon’s health ministry said that six people were killed and 15 others injured.
The Israeli military claimed the strike had killed Ibrahim Mohammad Qobeisi, identified as a senior Hezbollah commander who oversaw Hezbollah’s missile apparatus. It wasn’t clear how Israel had confirmed his death, and Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the claim.
The strikes have unnerved the Middle East, sparking fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah as the fighting in Gaza continues with no clear prospect of a truce. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis that they were headed into “complicated days.”
Rocket sirens went off in Haifa, Afula, Nazareth and other cities in Israel as Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets overnight, with the Iran-backed group saying the attacks targeted several Israeli military bases and airfields in retaliation for the strikes on Lebanese civilian population.
The Israeli military said it had struck 1,600 targets in Lebanon. Panicked by the scope and intensity of the attacks, civilians fled southern Lebanon and sought the relative safety of Beirut, clogging the main roads leading into the capital.
Lebanon’s health minister raised the death toll from the strikes to 558 people, with another 1,800 injured, making Monday the country’s deadliest day since a civil war that ended in 1990. The health minister, Firass Abiad, told a news conference on Tuesday that scores of women and children were among those killed. “The overwhelming majority of those who fell during the attacks that happened yesterday, were safe and unarmed people in their homes,” Dr. Abiad said.
The pace of Israeli strikes appeared to surpass that seen during the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese people were killed over a month.
Automated calls: People in Lebanon received text messages and automated calls warning them to move away from Hezbollah’s bases. That drew criticism from rights groups, which argued that Lebanese civilians would have no means of knowing where military targets were located.
Lebanon’s information minister accused Israel of “psychological warfare.”
UNICEF warning:
UNICEF has warned that any further escalation would be “catastrophic” for Lebanon’s children, particularly those displaced by Israel’s relentless airstrikes on the Arab country.
“On Monday alone, at least 35 children were reportedly killed in Lebanon. This is more than the number of children killed in Lebanon in the past 11 months. Eleven months in one day. 35 children, in one day among 492 reportedly killed,” UNICEF deputy representative to Lebanon Ettie Higgins told a UN press briefing in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday.
Higgins said “countless more children are in danger as I speak, exposed to ongoing attacks, displaced from their homes and unable to rely on an overstretched and under-sourced health system.”
U.N. meeting: France’s foreign minister said his country was requesting an emergency Security Council meeting on the situation in Lebanon, as world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly this week.
U.S. troops deploy: The Pentagon said it was sending additional U.S. troops to the Middle East. About 40,000 American service members are already stationed in the region to protect Israel from any retaliatory action by Iran and its allies.
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