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Israel has launched a series of deadly air strikes across Lebanon, as its military chief vowed to the intensify campaign against Hezbollah.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least five people, including a 15-year-old girl and two Sudanese citizens, were killed in an air attack on Al Jnah in Beirut. Another 52 people were injured, eight of them children.
An air strike on a car in Toul, southern Lebanon, killed a couple and injured their two children, aged nine and 15, the state-run National News Agency reported.
A drone strike hit a vehicle at the Kfarreman roundabout, setting a car ablaze, killing four inside. Another person was killed in a separate drone attack in Al Fawqa in Nabatieh.
In the town of Borj Rahhal, at least three were killed and one injured in a strike on a house, where civil defence teams are working to recover the bodies.
At least three people, including two women, were killed in strikes on a building in Ain Saadeh, an area overlooking Beirut that had until now largely been spared the violence between Hezbollah and Israel.
Elsewhere, an air strike killed two and wounded five in Mashghara in the Western Bekaa District, while a strike on the town of Aabba in the south killed at least four people, including the municipality chief and a police officer.
Speaking during a visit to Ras Al Bayada in southern Lebanon, Israeli army chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir said the military was expanding the mission called “Operation Northern Arrows” and would continue with the aim of severely weakening Hezbollah. “The damage to Hezbollah will intensify,” he said.
Lebanon was drawn into the regional conflict after Iran-backed Hezbollah began launching missiles at Israel from Lebanese territory on March 2 in support of Iran. The state and the Lebanon Armed Forces have no role in the war, however.
Israel has since carried out widespread strikes across the neighbouring country and launched a ground incursion into the south, in what has become the most violent spillover of the conflict linked to the US and Israeli war with Iran.
By late March, more than 400 Hezbollah fighters had been killed, sources told Reuters. The Israeli military said at least 10 of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon over the same period.
Lebanese authorities say 1,461 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since March 2, including at least 124 children, while more than one million people have been displaced.
At least 10 Lebanese soldiers have also been killed in Israeli strikes during the same period, most of them in the south, according to the Lebanese Armed Forces.
