More than 150 people are reported to have been killed in Israel’s latest attacks in northern Gaza and Lebanon.
At least 93 Palestinians were killed when an Israeli attack flattened a five-storey residential building housing displaced people in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, the head of Gaza’s Government Media Office said. Overnight, at least 60 people were killed in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Israel carried out the attacks as the humanitarian situation in both Gaza and Lebanon deteriorates. Conditions in northern Gaza, which has been under an Israeli siege since early October, are particularly harsh.
Despite the high death toll and worsening plight of those still living in northern Gaza, ceasefire talks that have resumed in Qatar are not expected to achieve a breakthrough while Israel has moved to halt the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is the main lifeline for most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, described harrowing scenes from the strike in Beit Lahiya.
“The images we are seeing show that more bodies are being pulled from under the rubble, including women and children,” he said.
Those being pulled from the rubble were reported to be bleeding “severely” with many “crushed by the heavy weight of the large pieces of concrete that collapsed on their heads while they were sleeping”.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the main medical facility in northern Gaza, said more than 150 dead and wounded had arrived after the attack. However, he warned that many of those injured may die because of a lack of resources.
Israeli forces detained dozens of medical staff at the hospital last week, leaving only three doctors.
“We call on the world to send specialised medical delegations,” the doctor told Al Jazeera.
The United States has asked Israel to explain the “horrifying” strike, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Miller said it was a “horrifying incident with a horrifying result.”
Washington contacted Israeli officials and “made clear we want to know exactly what happened, how you could have a result that produces, according to reports, dozens of children dead, and we don’t yet know the answer to that question,” Miller said.
‘Most violent day’
In eastern Lebanon, overnight attacks in the Bekaa Valley killed at least 60 people and injured 58, the Ministry of Public Health reported.
The highest death toll was in the town of Sahl Allak in Baalbek province, where 16 people were killed, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA).
In Ramm, also in Baalbek, an Israeli air strike killed nine people, including a mother and her four children, the state news agency reported.
Baalbek Mayor Bachir Khodr described the strikes as “the most violent day in Baalbek since the beginning of the aggression”. He said in a post on X that people remained trapped under the rubble.
Israeli bombardment of the area as well as of southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs has intensified over the past several weeks as part of an offensive against Hezbollah that has also killed hundreds of civilians.
In Gaza, at least 43,020 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks that day, and more than 200 were taken captive.
