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At least five people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the mountains east of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanon's health ministry said on Tuesday.
The rare strike on the Aley district came after a wave of intense Israeli air strikes hit Beirut's southern suburbs in the afternoon, state media reported, with medical clinics hit without warning and large residential buildings flattened.
Explosions were heard across the capital as Israel launched air strikes across several suburban areas, including Haret Hreik, Ghobeiry, Laylaki and Hadath, which have been repeatedly attacked by the army since it escalated aerial attacks on Lebanon in September.
Orders for residents to leave the southern suburbs were issued by the Israeli army in the early afternoon, with Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesman, announcing 11 sites were set to be bombed.
The strikes destroyed the Zein Medical Clinic in Bir Al Abed, the state-run National News Agency reported, saying the building had not been specified in the eviction warnings.
The attacks came as the death toll from an Israeli strike on the northern Akkar region rose to 17 people, with a dozen more wounded. The overnight attack, on a residential building in the village of Ain Yaacoub, was the northernmost attack on Lebanon since the war began.
It flattened the two-storey residential building, with locals searching through the rubble for survivors with phone flashlights. “There is no one here besides women and children,” a man said in a video circulating on social media of the aftermath of the strike.
The remote village, home to mostly Sunni Muslims and Orthodox Christians, is far from areas associated with Hezbollah, which Israel has claimed is its main target in Lebanon.
A child was killed in an Israeli strike on the Akkar village of Akroum this month, which destroyed a bridge linking the rugged area, close to Syria, with other parts of Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Israeli media reported that three rockets fired from Lebanon were intercepted over Nahariyya and Tel Aviv.
Cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel's military began in October last year, escalating into a full-blown Israeli attack and ground invasion in September. Israel's strikes have destroyed large swathes of civilian areas, killing more than 3,240 people and displacing at least 1.4 million – including hundreds of thousands of people who have fled into neighbouring Syria.
Israel's new Defence Minister, Israel Katz, on Monday said there will be no end to the fighting with Hezbollah until the objectives of the war with the Iran-backed group are met. “There will be no ceasefire and there will be no respite [for Hezbollah] until the goals of the war are achieved,” he told the Israeli military's general staff forum in his first meeting with the group.
Civil defence teams have been regularly targeted in Israeli air strikes, hampering efforts to rescue the victims of attacks, which are often carried out with little to no warning. When displacement warnings have been issued, civilians are often told in the middle of the night or given only minutes to leave before the bombing begins.
The Akkar attack came hours after seven people were killed in an Israeli air strike near the southern city of Sidon, followed by another that killed at least three people in the eastern Bekaa valley.
Israel has pledged to expand its ground invasion of southern Lebanon in the coming weeks, according to local media reports, with thousands more reserve troops to be called up to join the Northern Command. At least four divisions are already operating on the ground.
