Mayor among 16 Killed in Israeli Strike on South Lebanon Municipality Building

A view of a damaged site after an Israeli strike in Nabatieh, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, southern Lebanon October 16, 2024. (Reuters)
A view of a damaged site after an Israeli strike in Nabatieh, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, southern Lebanon October 16, 2024. (Reuters)
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Mayor among 16 Killed in Israeli Strike on South Lebanon Municipality Building

A view of a damaged site after an Israeli strike in Nabatieh, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, southern Lebanon October 16, 2024. (Reuters)
A view of a damaged site after an Israeli strike in Nabatieh, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, southern Lebanon October 16, 2024. (Reuters)

An Israeli airstrike destroyed the municipal headquarters in a major town in south Lebanon on Wednesday, killing 16 people including the mayor, in the biggest attack on an official Lebanese state building since the Israeli air campaign began.

Lebanese officials denounced the attack, which also wounded more than 50 people in Nabatieh, a provincial capital, saying it was proof that Israel's campaign against the Hezbollah armed group was now shifting to target the Lebanese state.

The Israelis "intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council to discuss the city's service and relief situation" to aid people displaced by the Israeli campaign, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, on a visit to northern Israel near the border, said Israel would not halt its assault on Hezbollah to allow negotiations.

"Hezbollah is in great distress," he said according to a statement from his office. "We will hold negotiations only under fire. I said this on day one, I said it in Gaza and I am saying it here."

Israel launched its ground and air campaign in Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah after a year during which the Iran-backed armed group fired across the border in support of the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.

In recent weeks Israel has assassinated Hezbollah's senior leadership and pushed into southern border towns, saying its aim is to make it safe for tens of thousands of Israelis to return to homes in Israel's north evacuated under Hezbollah fire.

Israel first issued an evacuation notice for Nabatieh, a city of tens of thousands of people, on Oct. 3. At the time, the city's Mayor Ahmed Kahil told Reuters he would not leave.

Israel's military said on Wednesday it struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the Nabatieh area and its navy also hit dozens of targets in southern Lebanon.

It said it had "dismantled" a tunnel network used by Hezbollah's elite Radwan Forces in the heart of a town near the border with Israel, publishing a video showing multiple explosions rocking a cluster of buildings. Lebanese officials said it was the small town of Mhaibib.

STRIKES RESUME ON SOUTHERN BEIRUT SUBURBS

Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli warplanes hit Beirut's southern suburbs for the first time in nearly a week.

Reuters heard two blasts and saw plumes of smoke rising from two separate neighborhoods. The blasts came after Israel issued an evacuation order which mentioned only one building.

The Israeli military said it had targeted an underground Hezbollah weapons stockpile.

"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including advancing warnings to the population in the area," the Israeli military said. Hezbollah did not immediately comment.

It was the first attack on Beirut since Oct. 10, when two strikes near the city center killed 22 people and brought down entire buildings in a densely populated neighborhood.

Israel has called on the United Nations to move members of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon out of the combat zone for their safety. UNIFIL says its troops have come under Israeli attack several times, though Israel has disputed accounts of those incidents.

The 10,000-strong peacekeeper force comprises contingents from 50 countries, including 2,500 Italian, French and Spanish soldiers, causing strain between Israel and some of its most prominent European allies.

Having long accused UNIFIL of failing in its mission to keep armed fighters out of the border area, Israel adopted a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday.

"The State of Israel places great importance on the activities of UNIFIL and has no intention of harming the organization or its personnel," Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

"Furthermore, Israel views UNIFIL as playing an important role in the 'day after' following the war against Hezbollah."

EU countries contributing to the peacekeeping mission held a conference call, and concluded that the mission is "essential and fundamental" and that only the UN can decide whether to end it, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said.

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington had expressed its concerns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration over recent attacks on Beirut.

France has banned Israeli firms from participating in an upcoming military naval trade show, two sources aware of the matter said on Wednesday, the latest incident to highlight an increasingly tense relationship between the two allies.

Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The UN says a quarter of the country is under evacuation orders. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.

Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.

Lebanon's Mikati appeared to cast doubt on diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire.

"What can deter the enemy (Israel) from its crimes, which have reached the point of targeting peacekeeping forces in the south? And what solution is hoped for in light of this reality?" he said in a written statement.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".