BEIRUT, Feb 21: At least 12 people were killed and 24 wounded – including three children – in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley Friday, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported. Another two people were killed by an Israeli strike on a Palestinian refugee camp earlier in the day.
Israel said it had hit “command centers” of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in Bekaa Valley. There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah.
Local television footage from the scene of one of the strikes in the Bekaa showed the targeted site appeared to be an apartment building, and emergency crews were fighting a fire and searching in the rubble for survivors.
Earlier Friday, another Israeli strike had hit a Palestinian refugee camp in the port city of Sidon, killing two people.
The Israeli military said it hit a “Hamas command center” in the Ein el-Hilweh camp. Hamas acknowledged that two of its members had been killed in the strike but called the claim that a command center was struck a “flimsy pretext.” It said the targeted building belonged to a joint security force made up of various Palestinian factions that is tasked with maintaining security in the camp.
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets from Lebanon into Israel in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.
Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling. The low-level conflict escalated into full-scale war in September 2024, later reined in but not fully stopped by a U.S.-brokered ceasefire two months later.
Since then, Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to rebuild and has carried out near-daily strikes in Lebanon that it says target Hezbollah militants and facilities. Hezbollah has claimed one strike against Israel since the ceasefire.
The death toll from Friday’s strikes was unusually high and comes at a moment of intensified tensions in the region as the United States has threatened to strike Iran – a backer of both Hezbollah and Hamas – if negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program fail to produce a deal.
During last year’s Israel-Iran war, Hezbollah remained on the sidelines, but many in Lebanon fear that the country will be pulled in should another war break out. (AP)
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