7 Lebanese paramedics killed in Israeli strike
66 slain in Gaza, 3 in West Bank
An Israeli airstrike on a paramedics center linked to a Muslim group in south Lebanon killed seven workers and triggered a retaliatory rocket attack on northern Israel that left one person dead on Wednesday.
The strike on the village of Habbariyeh, in the Arqoub area of Hasbaya district, came amid heavy bombardment along the border from both the Israeli military and Hezbollah.
The seven paramedics worked for the Lebanese Succor Association. All were aged under 30 and several were relatives. They were identified as: Abdallah Atoui, Mohammed Al-Farouk Atoui, Bara’ Abu Kais, Abderrahmane Shaar, Hussein Shaar, Ahmed Shaar and Mohammed Hammoud.
Several other people were injured in the strike, which leveled the center in which the medics were working. The attack was met with widespread condemnation by politicians and the public.
The Israeli Army said it “targeted a military building affiliated with the Islamic Group in Habbariyeh, targeting an armed individual who had a role in planning attacks against Israeli territory and was associated with the Islamic medical group. The target was eliminated along with other armed individuals in the building.”
The Islamic Group, however, denied any connection to the center. Its media office said: “The Lebanese Succor Association center targeted by the Israeli airstrike is its own entity and is not affiliated with the Islamic Group.”
Qasim Hashem, a politician from Lebanon’s Development and Liberation bloc, told Arab News: “What the Zionist enemy committed is a continuation of a criminal path that extends from Palestine to Lebanon. “Today, Habbariyeh and Arqoub are paying in blood for confronting the Zionist project that began 75 years ago. Arqoub is at the forefront of the confrontation due to factors of history, geography, identity and belonging.”
In heavy bombardment, Israeli strikes again hit Gaza City and Rafah, where a fireball lit up the sky over the city crowded with up to 1.5 million people, most of them
displaced by the war. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 66 people were killed in overnight bombardment and combat.
Israeli forces also killed three people in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in a pre-dawn raid. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, who determined that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza said she had faced threats over her work but stressed this only made her more determined to push ahead.