Israeli Strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley Kill More than 60

Rescuers work at a site damaged by Israeli strikes in Yohmor, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Rescuers work at a site damaged by Israeli strikes in Yohmor, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israeli Strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley Kill More than 60

Rescuers work at a site damaged by Israeli strikes in Yohmor, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Rescuers work at a site damaged by Israeli strikes in Yohmor, in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Israeli strikes on Lebanon's Bekaa Valley overnight killed more than 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor said on Tuesday, the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of hostilities.

Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble on Tuesday morning.

Israel has ramped up its air strikes across Lebanon over the last month, saying it is targeting Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Lebanese officials, rights groups and residents of affected towns say the strikes are indiscriminate.

No evacuation orders were given for any of the towns struck overnight. District governor Bachir Khodor said 67 people had been killed and more than 120 wounded and the death toll was expected to rise.

"That's only the people who've been removed from under the rubble and we still don't have the final toll. This is the most violent day for Baalbek in the last year," Khodor told Reuters.

The toll included nine people killed in Ram, its mayor Nazih Noun said, including a woman and her four children.

"It's quiet now, but we don't know how we can carry on with the funerals given the security situation," Noun told Reuters.

Large swathes of the Bekaa Valley are Hezbollah strongholds.

There was no immediate comment from Israel on the attacks.

More than 2,700 people have been killed by Israeli bombardments of Lebanon since Israel's military and Hezbollah began exchanging fire more than a year ago in parallel to the war in Gaza. At least two-thirds were killed in the last five weeks alone, when Israel stepped up its bombing campaign.

The expanded strikes have targeted the port city of Tyre. On Monday, Israel issued a new evacuation order for swathes of the city and carried out strikes that damaged the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, which sit within the evacuation zone.

The strikes and detonation of homes have left towns along Lebanon's border with Israel in ruins, according to satellite imagery.



Hamas Official Says Group ‘Appreciates’ Lebanon’s Right to Reach Agreement

 A man walks next to a destroyed building in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 27, 2024, as people returned to the area to check their homes after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (AFP)
A man walks next to a destroyed building in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 27, 2024, as people returned to the area to check their homes after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (AFP)
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Hamas Official Says Group ‘Appreciates’ Lebanon’s Right to Reach Agreement

 A man walks next to a destroyed building in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 27, 2024, as people returned to the area to check their homes after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (AFP)
A man walks next to a destroyed building in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 27, 2024, as people returned to the area to check their homes after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect. (AFP)

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday the group "appreciates" Lebanon's right to reach an agreement that protects its people and it hopes for a deal to end the war in Gaza.

A ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement came into effect on Wednesday after both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, but international efforts to halt the 14-month-old war between Hamas and Israel in the Palestinian territory of Gaza have stalled.

"Hamas appreciates the right of Lebanon and Hezbollah to reach an agreement that protects the people of Lebanon and we hope that this agreement will pave the way to reaching an agreement that ends the war of genocide against our people in Gaza," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Later on Wednesday, the group said in a statement it was open to efforts to secure a deal in Gaza, reiterating its outstanding conditions.

"We are committed to cooperating with any effort to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and we are interested in ending the aggression against our people," Hamas said.

It added that an agreement must end the war, pull Israeli forces out of Gaza, return displaced Gazans to their homes, and achieve a hostages-for-prisoners swap deal.

Without a similar deal in Gaza, many residents said they felt abandoned. In the latest violence, Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 15 people on Wednesday, some of them in a school housing displaced people, medics there said.

Months of attempts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress and negotiations are now on hold, with mediator Qatar saying it has told the two warring parties it would suspend its efforts until the sides are prepared to make concessions.

Abu Zuhri blamed the failure to reach a ceasefire deal that would end the Gaza war on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly accused Hamas of foiling efforts.

"Hamas showed high flexibility to reach an agreement and it is still committed to that position and is interested in reaching an agreement that ends the war in Gaza," Abu Zuhri said.

"The problem was always with Netanyahu who has always escaped from reaching an agreement," he added.

Hamas wants an agreement that ends the war in Gaza and sees the release of Israeli and foreign hostages as well as Palestinians jailed by Israel, while Netanyahu has said the war can only end after Hamas is eradicated.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, senior Palestinian Authority Hussein Al-Sheikh welcomed the agreement in Lebanon.

"We welcome the decision to ceasefire in Lebanon, and we call on the international community to pressure Israel to stop its criminal war in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and to stop all its escalatory measures against the Palestinian people," Sheikh, a confidant of President Mahmoud Abbas, posted on X.

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday his administration was pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza.