BEIRUT: Israeli air strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley overnight killed over 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor stated on Tuesday, the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of conflict.
Reuters reported that rescue workers were still searching bodies out of the debris on Tuesday morning. Israel has ramped up its attacks across Lebanon over the last month, claiming it is targeting Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Lebanese authorities, rights groups and locals of affected areas say that the attacks are indiscriminate. Local media reported that no evacuation orders were given for any of the areas struck overnight.
Local governor Bachir Khodor stated that 67 people were killed and over 120 injured and the death toll was likely to increase. The governor said that this is the most violent day for Baalbek valley in the last year.
The officials said that women and children were also killed in the Israeli air strikes. Over 2,700 people have been killed by Israeli attacks of Lebanon since Israel’s army and Hezbollah started exchanging fire over a year ago in parallel to the war in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said that at least 55 Palestinians have been killed and dozens of others injured in an Israeli attack on a residential compound in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Tuesday.
The Emergency Service said that many victims were believed to still be trapped under the debris. The same numbers were earlier reported by official Palestinian news agency WAFA and Hamas media. WAFA reported, quoting medics that many of those killed in the Israeli strike were children and women.
