At least 394 people have been killed and 1,130 injured in ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon since Monday, the country’s health minister said Sunday.
Rakan Nassereddine told a press conference that 42 women and 83 children were among those killed in the attacks, while the injured included 274 women and 254 children.
Israel has expanded its military campaign in Lebanon since Monday, following limited rocket fire by Hezbollah amid broader regional tensions linked to the war launched by Israel and the US against Iran.
Despite a ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah since November 2024, Israel has continued near-daily violations that have left hundreds dead and wounded.
Israel has killed more than 4,000 people and wounded 17,000 during an offensive in Lebanon that began in October 2023 and escalated into a full-scale war in September 2024.
Lebanon was dragged into the wider Middle East war on Monday when Hezbollah fired at Israel, which responded with a new military campaign that has killed nearly 300 people and forced hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes.
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, a stronghold of Hezbollah, buildings lay in mounds of smoking rubble and twisted metal, Reuters footage showed.
Further east, in the town of Nabi Chit, a heavy Israeli bombardment after a rare Israeli airborne raid had punched craters into the ground, burying cars in mountains of dirt and launching one vehicle onto the roof of a two-storey building.
In Israel, air raid sirens warning of incoming rockets and drones, sent people fleeing to their shelters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised statement, said that it was up to the ?Lebanese government to enforce the 2024 agreement to disarm Hezbollah.
“Your responsibility is to disarm Hezbollah. If you do not do this, Hezbollah’s aggression will result in disastrous repercussions for Lebanon. It is time for you to take your destiny in to your own hands. We will do all that is necessary to defend our communities and citizens,” Netanyahu said.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a separate statement that the Lebanese government and all of Lebanon would “pay a heavy price” if Hezbollah is not disarmed. Israel had no territorial claims against Lebanon but would not allow cross-border fire, Katz said.
Lebanon’s government instructed the army last year to establish a state monopoly on arms. Troops had confiscated Hezbollah’s weapons in parts of the south but senior Lebanese officials and security sources said pursuing the plan could cause internal tensions as the group had refused to give up its arsenals in full.
An Israeli military official told Reuters Israeli military operations were now acting “to remove the threat from Lebanon.”
Overnight, Israeli helicopters dropped troops near Nabi Chit in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.
Israel’s military said the troops staged the operation to seek the remains of Ron Arad, an Israeli airforce navigator missing in Lebanon since 1986 but no findings related to him were recovered.
An Israeli air strike has killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza City, according to local health officials.
Medics said the two people were travelling in a car near Al-Azhar University in western Gaza City when the strike hit. Several others in the area were wounded.
The attack comes a day after a man was killed and a child seriously wounded in a strike on Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.
The latest casualties come despite a US-brokered “ceasefire” that began last October. At least 640 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since then, according to local health authorities.
Gaza has been devastated by more than two years of Israeli attacks that have killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.