Israeli airstrike kills 3 in southern Lebanon

By Wassim Seif El Din

BEIRUT (AA) - Three people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the town of Tayr Debba in southern Lebanon, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

The state news agency NNA said that Israeli warplanes conducted 15 overnight airstrikes on several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, including Tayr Debba, Ayta al-Shaab, Kfarkela, and Ghandouriyeh.

The Civil Defense Service said that its teams had recovered the body of a man from inside a car struck by an Israeli airstrike on a road in the town of Chamaa in southern Lebanon.

According to a statement by a Lebanese government emergency committee, the Israeli army carried out 138 airstrikes in the past 24 hours on areas across Lebanon, mostly in the country's south.

Israel has mounted a huge air campaign in Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing more than 1 million.

The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of its offensive on the Gaza Strip, in which Israel has killed more than 42,400 people, most of them women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.

Despite international warnings that the Middle East was on the brink of a regional war amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, Tel Aviv expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching an incursion into southern Lebanon.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara