The death toll from an Israeli air attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs has risen to 45 people, including three children and seven women, Lebanese authorities say.
“The number of dead has risen to 45 people,” Lebanon’s health ministry said on Sunday, updating an earlier toll of 38 from the Friday attack.
It said “work continues to remove the rubble for the third day in a row” and that DNA sampling would be used to determine the identities of some of the bodies.
The strike, which wrecked two buildings in the Lebanese capital’s Dahiya district during rush hour on Friday, also injured about 60 people.
The three children killed were aged four, six and 10, according to Abiad. Emergency personnel was still searching for 17 people under the rubble.
“[The rescue operation] could continue for another day or so,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari reported from Beirut.
“There is still a sense of shock and fear,” she added. “Many of the shops in this area are closed, there are very few people present as many have chosen to pack up and leave.”
Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh told Al Jazeera Arabic that the bombing of a residential building constituted a “war crime” and that Israel was “dragging the region into a war”.
Israel’s military said it carried out a “targeted strike” against senior members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces in the Beirut suburb. An Israeli military spokesperson said on Saturday that “at least 16 Hezbollah militants” were killed in the attack.
Hezbollah confirmed that two of its top commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmad Mahmoud Wahabi, along with 12 other members, were killed. In July, an Israeli air strike killed Fuad Shukr, the group’s top military commander.
Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said Lebanon had entered a “decisive” phase after the attack on the residential suburb, telling a news conference on Saturday that everything must be done to prevent further violations of Lebanese territory and avoid further deterioration of the security situation.
Friday’s air attack on the densely populated area followed explosions of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was also blamed on Israel and killed at least 39 people while wounding close to 3,000 others.
Rocket sirens in Israel
Late on Saturday, Hezbollah said it launched dozens of rockets at the Ramat David air base, east of Haifa, in response to the killing of civilians in Lebanon. Sirens were activated across northern Israel.
If confirmed, the assault would be the farthest the group’s firings have reached inside Israel since the start of the ongoing clashes in October of last year.
The Israeli military said 10 rockets were launched form Lebanon and most were intercepted.
The Israeli military had said earlier in the day that dozens of its warplanes had been striking southern Lebanon “extensively”.
Hezbollah had also launched dozens of retaliatory rockets into northern Israel throughout Saturday.
For nearly a year after Israel attacked Gaza, Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have traded crossborder fire with the Israeli army. But the exchanges have escalated since late August.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes had launched “a large-scale air attack” on Saturday evening over southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military said about 90 rockets were fired at northern Israel from Lebanon and that it struck more than 400 rocket launchers in Lebanon. It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was killed or wounded in the back-and-forth attacks.
“This exchange is the most intense since the two sides started engaging in crossborder fire on October 8, a day after Israel began its latest war on Gaza,” Al Jazeera’s Jabbari reported from Beirut.
The Israeli army announced updated safety guidelines for areas north of Haifa, including caps on gatherings of 30 people in open spaces and 300 in enclosed spaces.
The Israeli attacks on Lebanon have serious implications for international law, said Ibrahim Fraihat, professor of international conflict resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“What we are seeing in Lebanon takes the disrespect of international humanitarian law to a [new] level,” Fraihat told Al Jazeera. “These violations are being normalised by the silence of the West.”
He warned that the escalation of tensions in Lebanon was bound to divert attention from Gaza, allowing for more human rights violations to take place there.
Nearly a year into its war on Gaza, Israel believes it can deal serious damage to the Lebanese group by “doubling down”, according to Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Jordan.
“They think that forcing Hezbollah through monstering them with military strikes, in multiple areas, on multiple fronts, of varying ferocity, will force it to make some kind of tactical retreat,” he added.
