BEIRUT: Israel launched strikes on south Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday, Lebanese state media said, as Iran-backed group Hezbollah said it kept up its attacks on Israeli troops.
Lebanon was pulled into the Middle East war when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on March 2 to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Israel, which occupied southern Lebanon for around two decades until 2000, has intensified strikes across Lebanon and sent ground troops into the country’s south since the latest bout of fighting began.
On Tuesday, it said its military would take control of the border area up to the Litani River, around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the frontier.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli strikes and artillery shelling in several locations in the south on Wednesday.
It also said that “enemy warplanes… launched a strike” on Beirut’s southern suburbs, after Israel’s military late Tuesday renewed an evacuation warning for several districts in the Hezbollah stronghold.
An AFP correspondent saw a street covered in debris including shattered cement and warped metal after the early morning strike, while an apartment building’s upper floors appeared damaged.
The area has been targeted multiple times during the conflict and is largely empty of residents, who have fled.
Israel’s military said it struck Hezbollah targets across Lebanon overnight “including a command centre” in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
It also said it attacked petrol stations belonging to the Al-Amana fuel company, which it says is controlled by Hezbollah and finances the group.
Paramedics killed
Lebanon’s health ministry said on Wednesday that two paramedics were killed when an Israeli strike “targeted their motorbike as they headed to carry out a rescue mission in the city of Nabatiyeh” in the south on Tuesday.
The ministry condemned the strike on the pair, saying they wore full rescue workers’ uniforms and the motorbike was also marked for emergency response.
According to the ministry, 42 health workers are among more than 1,000 people killed in Lebanon in more than three weeks of Israeli strikes.
Lebanese authorities say upwards of one million people have been displaced.
Hezbollah said its fighters on Wednesday targeted Israeli troops “massed in the border towns of Naqura and Qawzah” and in sites across the border “with more than 100 rockets”.
The statement came as the group claimed a series of attacks targeting Israeli troops in south Lebanon and northern Israel.
Israel’s military in an earlier statement said ground troops in southern Lebanon had “dismantled a weapons storage facility”, and the air force killed “several terrorists”.
It also said troops had “dismantled Hezbollah command centres in which numerous weapons were located”, without specifying where.
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