DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) —
Lebanese authorities on Friday raised the death toll from Israeli bombardment of the country’s northeast to at least 45, with airstrikes pounding rural villages that had previously been spared the worst of Israel’s intense air campaign against Hezbollah.
The governor of Baalbek, Bachir Khodr, reported airstrikes on nine villages across the northeast killing 41 people on Friday, 17 more deaths than was previously reported by Lebanon’s National News Agency.
The state-run news agency, NNA, separately reported four more people killed in the small farming village of Ollak, also in the Bekaa Valley — a rural area of olive groves and vineyards nestled between Lebanon’s two mountain ranges where the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group draws significant support.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel launched waves of deadly airstrikes across Lebanon and Gaza that killed at least 24 people in Lebanon’s northeast on Friday, according to the state-run National News Agency, and transformed once-bustling neighborhood blocks in Beirut's southern suburbs into smoldering ruins.
Meanwhile in central Gaza, Palestinians recovered the bodies of 25 people killed in a barrage of Israeli aerial attacks that began Thursday, hospital officials said. Israel said it targeted Hamas infrastructure near the Nuseirat refugee camp.
The latest violence comes against the backdrop of the Biden administration’s renewed diplomatic push, days before the U.S. election, to reach temporary cease-fire deals. Israel has stepped up its offensive against Hamas' remaining fighters in Gaza, pulverizing areas in the north and raising fears of worsening humanitarian conditions civilians still there.
Israel has broadened its strikes in Lebanon to bigger urban hubs, like Baalbek, in recent weeks after initially targeting smaller border villages the south, where Hezbollah draws deep support. Iran-backed Hezbollah doubles as a major political party and provider of social services in Lebanon.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, drones and missiles from Lebanon into Israel in solidarity with Hamas immediately after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza. This yearlong cross-border fighting boiled over on Oct. 1, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon for the first time since 2006.
In Lebanon's capital, Israeli planes pounded the southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight and early Friday for the first time in four days, spreading panic after a rare lull. The Israeli military, which warned residents to evacuate at least nine locations in Dahiyeh, said it hit Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites and command centers.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from Dahiyeh, where fears of Israeli bombings drive a mass outflow of residents at night.
Bulldozers rumbled through clouds of dust and smoke Friday, clearing rubble from the pulverized roads where Israeli warplanes had reduced dozens of buildings to their skeletal remains. Formerly home to families and businesses, mid-rise apartment blocks were left open to the breeze, walls blown off and furniture buried. Hezbollah supporters in several locations raised the group's bright yellow banner atop the rubble.
Intensified Israeli airstrikes on and around the northeastern city of Baalbek this week have prompted 60,000 people to flee their homes, emptying many small villages in the area, said Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese lawmaker representing the region.
Overall, U.N. agencies estimate that Israel’s ground invasion and bombardment of Lebanon has displaced 1.4 million people there. Residents of Israel's northern communities near Lebanon, roughly 60,000 people, have also been displaced for more than a year.
Back-to-back rocket attacks from Lebanon on Thursday killed seven people near the northern city of Haifa and near the northern border, including four Thai farm workers.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted last year, more than 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reported on Friday. It says a quarter of those killed were women and children.
In Lebanon's northeast — where villages had largely been spared the worst of Israeli bombardment until last month — Israel launched four airstrikes, killing at least two dozen people, driving more families to flee with whatever they could carry and sending thick plumes of smoke over the horizon.
Rescuers searched for survivors after airstrikes killed seven people in Younine, a town in the Bekaa Valley, and brought down a building believed to be housing 20 people, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. Further Israeli strikes in the northeast killed 11 people in the village of Amhaz, four people in the town of Nahleh and another two in the village of Taraya.
Israel also pressed on with its bombardment of Gaza on Friday, where a barrage of airstrikes hit central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp and killed at least 21 Palestinians — including an 18-month-old and his 10-year-old sister — according to health officials at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israeli strikes also hit a motorcycle in Zuwaida and a house in Deir al-Balah, killing four more people, hospital officials said, bringing the overall death toll in Gaza to 25 on Friday.
The Israeli military did not comment on the strikes outside Nuseirat camp. It said it was aware of reports of civilian casualties and was investigating. In a separate announcement, the army said an airstrike on a vehicle in Gaza's southern town of Khan Younis killed a senior member of the Hamas political bureau, Izz al-Din Kassab, and his assistant, Ayman Ayesh.
Hamas confirmed the death of Kassab, who was not well known to the public. Israel alleged he was a coordinator between militant groups in Gaza.
As U.S. diplomats left the region this week after a flurry of meetings with Israeli officials, there were no signs of a breakthrough on a cease-fire in either Lebanon or Gaza.
Hamas on Friday doubled down on its longstanding demands for a permanent cease-fire and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, saying Israel offered only a temporary pause in the war and an increase in aid shipments in the latest negotiations. There was no immediate comment from Israel.
“The proposals do not meet the comprehensive needs of the Palestinian people in terms of security, stability, relief, and reconstruction,” said senior Hamas official Bassem Naem, speaking first to the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV before confirming the group’s position to The Associated Press.
Israel’s blistering war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Health officials inside Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of the dead in the enclave are women and children.
Israeli forces have recently shifted their attention to Hamas militants that they say have regrouped in northern Gaza, renewing an offensive that has trapped tens of thousands of people under intense bombardment without enough food or water.
Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly delayed an emergency polio vaccination campaign, which the World Health Organization announced it planned to finally launch on Saturday — but only in Gaza City. Towns further north, like Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, remain inaccessible as Israel tightens its siege.
The U.N. and other humanitarian organizations warned on Friday that “the situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” citing Israel's denial of humanitarian aid to the area, military raids on hospitals, air strikes on shelters and obstruction of Palestinian rescue teams who struggle to help survivors after Israeli attacks.
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Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Bassem Mroue and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut, David Rising in Bangkok, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Edith Lederer in New York and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this story.
Wafaa Shurafa And Julia Frankel, The Associated Press