Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed at least 20 people on Saturday, Lebanon’s state news agency said, one day after a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect, underscoring the fragility of a truce aimed at halting months of escalating violence.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes and drones struck multiple civilian and structural locations in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
Hezbollah accused Israel of committing hundreds of blatant ceasefire violations and warned that the continued Israeli aggression “will not pass without a response”.
Hamas accuses Israel of daily truce violations and the Gaza Strip continues to suffer severe bloodshed, with efforts to permanently halt the destructive assault on the enclave still at a standstill.
An overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed four members of the Al-Safadi family, including the husband, wife and their two daughters, according to the civil defence agency, a rescue service that operates under Hamas authority.It said the strike also injured 12 others.
Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of four members of the Safadi family, including two children.
“Around 2 o’clock, my cousins were asleep when a missile struck them. They have no connection to Hamas, nor are they involved in anything. They’re just innocent children,” said Nael al-Safadi, a relative.
AFP footage from the scene showed an exterior wall of the apartment blown off, exposing rubble, clothes, mattresses and other household belongings strewn across the shattered interior.
“By God, I still feel as though I’m in a dream — I never expected this to happen to us,” Mohammad al-Safadi, who survived the strike, told AFP.
“I’m a civilian. I swear to God I’ve never carried a weapon or fired one. What do you want from me? Go after whoever you’re after, what’s my fault in this?”
Al-Shifa hospital, meanwhile, said it had received one body following a separate Israeli drone strike near an intersection in the north of Gaza City.
Later on Saturday, six more people were killed in separate Israeli attacks, including three when an Israeli aircraft targeted a house in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the civil defence agency reported.
It said the three killed included a local Palestinian journalist working with Qatar-based Al Jazeera.Ahmed Wishah was a cameraman for the channel, the network said, which condemned “the continuation of these crimes” against its journalists.
The military, however, said he was a “Hamas terrorist”.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the other deaths, which were confirmed by Gaza hospitals.
The Israeli army has reported five deaths in its ranks during the same period.