An Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in a coastal town south of Beirut killed at least one person, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
The ministry said 20 others were wounded in the strike Tuesday in Jiyeh, around 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the port of Sidon.
The attack hit an area that has not been a regular target of Israeli military operations and had not received prior evacuation warnings.
“It felt like it was inside the house,” Malika Al Hajj, an elderly woman living in the area, told The Associated Press. “I ran away — I don’t even know which neighbor brought me out, because everything was black. You couldn’t see anything.”
Once outside, Hajj said she discovered that the strike had hit the nearby building where her nephews live.
“Men, women and children” live inside, she said. “I just want to be reassured. I saw some of them, but the others, they told me, were taken to the hospital."
At the site of the strike, the building’s skeletal frame stands amid the rubble, its concrete shattered, windows blown out and metal twisted from the impact.
Families were seen leaving the area, carrying what belongings they could gather.
Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 3,013 people and injured 13,553 others since Oct. 2023, the Lebanese government said on Tuesday.
