GAZA CITY: The Israeli military carried out devastating air strikes on Gaza and Lebanon on Sunday, killing dozens and reducing residential buildings to rubble in the war-torn regions.
Gaza’s civil defence said 30 people were killed on Sunday, including children, and at least 59 were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a building in the Palestinian territory’s north.
Following the strike early Sunday, 30 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the five-storey residential building in Beit Lahia, “including children and women”, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The spokesman added that at least 59 people were still trapped under the debris.
AFP images showed men covered in dust scrambling to reach people under the rubble, while some of the bodies were taken away on a donkey-pulled cart.
Other AFP images showed the flattened building with broken concrete and twisted metal sticking out from the ruins as more bodies covered in blankets lay nearby.
Hamas accused Israel of committing a “massacre” which it said is “a continuation of the genocidal war and revenge against unarmed civilians”.
Gaza’s health ministry on Sunday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war had reached 43,846. The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, a series of air raids struck Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday, official media reported and AFPTV footage showed, a day after heavy bombardment as the Israeli army said it targeted Hezbollah sites.
At least seven Israeli strikes hit separate locations in the area, the official National News Agency (NNA) said, some sending thick clouds of white smoke over the targets, according to the AFPTV images.
The raids followed two rounds of Israeli army evacuation warnings for sites in the Hadath, Burj al-Barajneh, Chiyah and Haret Hreik areas, saying they were near “Hezbollah sites and assets”.
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The NNA said “enemy aircraft” launched a heavy strike near St. Georges Hospital in Hadath, while another hit a “residential complex” in Haret Hreik.
Another raid “completely destroyed a 12-storey residential building near the Mar Mikhail church” in Chiyah, it said.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X that warplanes “under the guidance of the intelligence services launched a series of strikes that targeted military command bases and other Hezbollah structures”.
The fresh strikes followed repeated Israeli bombardment throughout Saturday of the southern suburbs, normally a bustling, densely populated area where Hezbollah holds sway and whose residents have now largely fled.
Also Sunday, the NNA said the Israeli army targeted villages in southern Lebanon, including seven strikes on Jibsheet in less than two hours.
Other raids hit sites in Khiam and in Marjayoun, where a drone strike on a house caused “material damage” to an Orthodox church and other buildings nearby, the NNA said.
The United Nations Human Rights Office earlier this month said it was “alarmed” at the “damage and destruction of buildings dedicated to religion”, including mosques and churches, in Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said it had engaged in overnight fighting with Israeli forces near Chamaa, about five kilometres (three miles) from the border with Israel.
