Israeli strikes kill 25 in Lebanon, including in a town with a dark history of civilian deaths

Israeli airstrikes kill 25 in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah; civilians, including children, among the casualties in southern town.

Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 25 people, officials said Wednesday (October 16, 2024), including more than a dozen in a southern town where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory.

Elsewhere in the south, a city’s Mayor was among the dead in a strike that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting to coordinate relief efforts.

The Israeli military said they were targeting a Hezbollah commander in the strikes late Tuesday (October 15, 2024) on the southern town of Qana, where 15 people were killed. Associated Press photos and video of the scene showed several flattened buildings and others with their top floors collapsed. Rescue workers carried away the remains of dead people and used a bulldozer to remove rubble, as they searched for more victims.

Israel said the target was Jalal Mustafa Hariri, Hezbollah's commander in charge of the Qana area.

In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more people, including four U.N. peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

“Qana always gets its share,” Mayor Mohammed Krasht told the AP, referring to the town’s grim history.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.