Hezbollah Hits Back After Israel Strike Kills Woman, Girl In Lebanon

Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on a village in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on a village in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
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Hezbollah Hits Back After Israel Strike Kills Woman, Girl In Lebanon

Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on a village in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
Smoke billows after an Israeli airstrike on a village in southern Lebanon. (AFP)

An Israeli air strike on south Lebanon killed a woman and a girl on Wednesday, prompting Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement to retaliate with rocket fire.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and its arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily fire across the border since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said that Khadija Salman was killed and her daughter seriously wounded in the "enemy" strike on the southern village of Majdal Zun.

Requesting anonymity, a hospital source confirmed the woman had died and her daughter remained in serious condition, adding that a young girl was also killed.

Rescue workers said several other people were wounded and rushed to hospital, AFP reported.

In the evening, Hezbollah said it fired several rockets at the Matzuva kibbutz across the border in Israel "in response to Israeli attacks on villages and civilian homes" including Majdal Zun.

The Lebanese movement also claimed responsibility for 11 other operations against Israeli military positions on the border.

The cross-border exchanges since October have killed at least 271 people on the Lebanese side, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including 42 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and six civilians have been killed, according to the Israeli army.

Last week, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed that Israel would pay "with blood", after 10 civilians, including seven members of one family, were killed in Lebanon's largest single-day death toll so far. Five Hezbollah fighters were also killed.



WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.