53 Killed in Israeli Strike North of Beirut

Rescuers and civilians use an excavator to search the rubble for survivors and victims at a site targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in Almat, Jbeil district, Lebanon, 10 November 2024. (EPA)
Rescuers and civilians use an excavator to search the rubble for survivors and victims at a site targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in Almat, Jbeil district, Lebanon, 10 November 2024. (EPA)
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53 Killed in Israeli Strike North of Beirut

Rescuers and civilians use an excavator to search the rubble for survivors and victims at a site targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in Almat, Jbeil district, Lebanon, 10 November 2024. (EPA)
Rescuers and civilians use an excavator to search the rubble for survivors and victims at a site targeted by an Israeli airstrike, in Almat, Jbeil district, Lebanon, 10 November 2024. (EPA)

Lebanon's health ministry said an Israeli strike on Sunday killed 53 people, including seven children, in the village of Almat north of the capital Beirut.  

AFPTV footage showed rescuers rummaging with their bare hands through the wreckage of a house that had been completely razed, pulling out bodies wrapped in blankets while an excavator moved the rubble.  

The Shiite Muslim majority village of Almat, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Beirut, is located in a mostly Christian Jbeil region. It is outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds of south Beirut and south and east Lebanon, which Israel has heavily bombed since late September in its war against the Iran-backed movement.

It also said body parts had been recovered from the site and were being identified.

A pile of broken concrete and the twisted metal structure that made up the roof lay at the bottom of a staircase leading to the destroyed house, AFP images showed.

Hezbollah lawmaker Raed Berro, one of the members of parliament representing the Jbeil district, was at the site of the strike and denied Israeli claims that Hezbollah members or weapons were embedded among civilians.  

"Important military and security figures are usually on the frontlines... not at the rear," he told AFP.  

"Under the rubble, there are only children, elderly men and women," he said.  

Facebook user Ali Haydar posted a picture of the home, which he said belonged to his family, before it was destroyed. He added that people displaced from the eastern Baalbek region had sought refuge there.  

"There were 35 relatives of ours from Baalbek in the house" including women and children, he said.  

"Most of them have been martyred" in the strike, Haydar added.  

- Fleeing -  

The area was cordoned off by Lebanese security forces and Hezbollah members in civilian clothing, an AFP correspondent at the scene saw.  

Dozens of people packed their belongings in their cars and fled the village, the correspondent said.  

The health ministry also said Israeli strikes killed three Hezbollah-affiliated rescuers in south Lebanon.  

Earlier, Lebanese official media reported an Israeli strike on a house in the main eastern city of Baalbek, which was not preceded by an Israeli army evacuation warning.  

"Enemy aircraft launched a strike on a house in the Al-Laqees neighborhood" of the city, the state-run National News Agency said.  

Israel intensified its air campaign mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon on September 23 and a week later sent in ground troops.  

The escalation came after nearly a year of low-intensity, cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas following the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.  

More than 3,186 people have been killed in Lebanon since the cross-border exchanges began, according to Lebanon's health ministry, most of them since September 23.



Israeli Forces Surround Lebanon’s Khiam Ahead of Storming it

Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
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Israeli Forces Surround Lebanon’s Khiam Ahead of Storming it

Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)
Smoke rises as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the village of al-Khiam in southern Lebanon, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, northern Israel, 22 November 2024, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel. (EPA)

Israeli forces have blocked supply routes to the southern Lebanese border city of al-Khiam ahead of storming it.

They have also surrounded the strategic city with Hezbollah fighters still inside, launching artillery and air attacks against them.

Hezbollah fighters have been holding out in Khiam for 25 days. The capture of the city would be significant and allow Israeli forces easier passage into southern Lebanon.

Field sources said Israeli forces have already entered some neighborhoods of Khiam from its eastern and southern outskirts, expanding their incursion into its northern and eastern sectors to fully capture the city.

They cast doubt on claims that the city has been fully captured, saying fighting is still taking place deeper inside its streets and alleys, citing the ongoing artillery fire and drone and air raids.

Israel has already cut off Hezbollah’s supply routes by seizing control of Bourj al-Mamlouk, Tall al-Nahas and olive groves in al-Qlaa in the Marayoun region. Its forces have also fanned out to the west towards the Litani River.

The troops have set up a “line of fire” spanning at least seven kms around Khiam to deter anti-tank attacks from Hezbollah and to launch artillery, drone and aerial attacks, said the sources.

The intense pressure has forced Hezbollah to resort to suicide drone attacks against Israeli forces.

Hezbollah’s al-Manar television said Israeli forces tried to carry out a new incursion towards Khiam’s northern neighborhoods.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that since Friday night, Israeli forces have been using “all forms of weapons in their attempt to capture Khiam, which Israel views as a strategic gateway through which it can make rapid ground advances.”

It reported an increase in air and artillery attacks in the past two days as the forces try to storm the city.

The troops are trying to advance on Khiam by first surrounding it from all sides under air cover, it continued.

They are also booby-trapping some homes and buildings and then destroying them, similar to what they have done in other southern towns, such as Adeisseh, Yaround, Aitaroun and Mais al-Jabal.

Khiam holds symbolic significance to the Lebanese people because it was the first city liberated following Israel’s implementation of United Nations Security Council 425 on May 25, 2000, that led to its withdrawal from the South in a day that Hezbollah has since declared Liberation Day.