Lebanon says Israeli attacks kill nearly 300 since Monday

BEIRUT:  Lebanon’s health ministry on Saturday said Israeli attacks on the country had killed almost 300 people since the start of the war with Hezbollah this week.

In a statement, the ministry said that “the death toll from the Israeli aggression, from dawn on Monday … has risen to 294 martyrs and 1,023 wounded.”

Israel warned Lebanon of a “very heavy price” if it did not rein in Hezbollah on Saturday, as it pounded the group’s strongholds around the country with air strikes and mounted a deadly airborne raid in the east.

Lebanon was dragged into the wider Middle East war on Monday when Hezbollah fired at Israel, which responded with a new military campaign that has forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.

On Saturday morning, more buildings in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut lay as mounds of smoking rubble and twisted metal, after heavy Israeli bombardment that followed an evacuation order for civilians.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, addressing Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun in a statement, said that if the Lebanese government failed to enforce a 2024 agreement to disarm Hezbollah, it and the whole ⁠country would suffer.

“If the choice is between protecting our civilians and our soldiers or protecting the state of Lebanon — we will choose the protection of our civilians and soldiers, and the Lebanese government and Lebanon will pay a very heavy price,” Katz said.

He added that Israel had no territorial claims against Lebanon, but would not allow a situation where there could be fire targeting Israel from Lebanese territory.

Overnight, Israeli helicopters dropped troops near the town of Nabi Chit in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley in a rare airborne operation.

Israel’s military said the troops had staged the operation to seek the remains ⁠of Ron Arad, an Israeli air force navigator missing in Lebanon since 1986. However, no findings related to him were recovered, it said.

Hezbollah said in a statement overnight that it had fired on Israeli troops dropped near Nabi Chit by four helicopters, and that the troops had withdrawn. The Israeli military said none of its forces was injured.

Lebanon’s health ministry said 41 people had been killed in the last 24 hours in Israeli attacks in the Nabi Chit area. The Lebanese army said three of its personnel were among the dead.

Shawki Al-Masri, who lives in a town adjacent to Nabi Chit, described the overnight bombing in the area as “a night of hell”.

“People in the town woke up and started shooting at them, then the warplanes started bombing. ⁠It was a very ⁠violent night and only calmed down when the sun came up,” he said. Monitoring Desk