Lebanese rescuers say 30 killed in Israeli strike on apartments

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 Lebanese health ministry gave a preliminary death toll of 20 late on Tuesday but warned the figure could rise.

The Israeli military said it struck “terror infrastructure” belonging to the Shia armed group Hezbollah.

Moussa Zahran, who lived on one of the upper floors of the apartment building, said his son and wife were injured by falling masonry.

“These rocks that you see here weigh 100kg, they fell on a 13kg kid,” he 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.

On Wednesday afternoon, Lebanese media reported new air strikes in the southern city of Nabatieh and Beirut’s southern suburbs. These came hours after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate areas around several buildings, warning them it was about to act against “facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah”.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said seven people were killed in a strike on the village of al-Ain, in the eastern Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli military also said it had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s forces in the southern border region of Khiam, and that a number of other Hezbollah fighters had been killed by air strikes and by troops operating inside southern Lebanon over the past day.

Meanwhile Hezbollah’s new secretary general, Naim Qassem, said in a speech that the group had “tens of thousands of trained resistance combatants” ready to fight and that nowhere in Israel was “beyond the reach of our drones and missiles”.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired about 120 rockets into northern and central Israel on Wednesday. There were no reports of injuries.

Local media said one rocket hit a car park near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, but the Israel Airport Authority said its operations were not affected. Hezbollah said it targeted the Tzrifin military base, which near the airport.

A large section of a rocket also hit a parked car in the town of Raanana, just north of Tel Aviv.

Since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah six weeks ago, at least 2,400 people have been killed and more than 1.2 million displaced across Lebanon, according to Lebanese authorities.

Israeli air strikes have eliminated most of the group’s leadership, including Qassem’s predecessor Hassan Nasrallah, and caused widespread destruction in parts of southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs – areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza.

It says it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of northern Israeli border areas displaced by rocket attacks, which Hezbollah launched in support of Palestinians the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israeli authorities say more than 70 people have been killed by Hezbollah attacks in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights over the past year.