Nov. 11 (UPI) — Dozens of people were killed in Israeli military strikes on northern Lebanon and the Gaza strip, including as many as 20 children, authorities said.
At least 23 people, including seven children, were killed and six injured in airstrikes Sunday north of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in Almat near Byblos, the BBC quoted Lebanon’s health ministry as saying.
The Israel Defense Forces said Hezbollah was operating from the site it had targeted and claimed the group was using it to store weapons, adding that it had taken exhaustive measures to “mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of aerial surveillance and precise intelligence”.
At the other end of the country, three paramedics were also killed in an Israeli attack on Adloun, near Sidon, in the south.
In Gaza, at least 25 people, 13 of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residence in Jabalia in the north in which more than 30 people were also injured, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
A further five people were killed in Gaza City’s Sabra district in an airstrike on a house, according to the CDA, which said the death toll could rise as some people were unaccounted for.
The IDF told CNN it had hit “a terrorist infrastructure site in the area of Jabalia” that was endangering its troops operating in the area.
“The details are under review,” said the Israeli military, which reiterated that it had taken measures to minimize the likelihood of hurting civilians.
The charity Save the Children condemned the attacks saying they were part of a war on children.
“Parents, children, and grandchildren among at least 32 people reported killed in Israeli dawn strikes on Jabalia residence northern,” Middle East regional director Jeremy Stoner wrote in a post on X.
“The U.N. has confirmed children are the main victims of residential strikes. Make no mistake: this is a war on children.”
Figures posted online by the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza on Sunday morning show 43,603 people killed and 102,929 injured since Israel began its military campaign immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
Israel disputes the casualty statistics, saying Hamas exaggerates the true figure and does not distinguish between combatants and civilians — but the United Nations’ various agencies use them, with a disclaimer acknowledging they are unverified.
The number of people killed in Lebanon since Israel began its latest military campaign in late September was 3,189 and 14,078 injured, as of Sunday morning, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
Sunday’s attacks come as a 30-day U.S. deadline nears for Israel to take “concrete measures” to improve the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza or risk losing military assistance provided by Washington, as demanded by U.S. law.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Security Lloyd Austin wrote Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Oct. 13 expressing deep concern at the “increasingly dire humanitarian situation” facing more than 2 million civilians in Gaza and calling for “urgent and sustained action by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.”
They said the U.S. departments of State and Defense were legally obligated to continually assess whether Israel is facilitating, and not arbitrarily denying, restricting or otherwise impeding, directly or indirectly, the uninterrupted delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance and U.S. government-supported international assistance efforts.
The State Department must conduct a similar assessment under Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act to provide additional Foreign Military Financing assistance to Israel, the letter said.
The communication also refers to a National Security Memo signed by U.S. President Joe Biden in February requiring that countries in receipt of U.S. military aid that are engaged in a military conflict allow the free transfer of U.S.-supported humanitarian aid without interruption.
