Israeli attack kills Lebanese mayor at aid coordination meeting | Lebanon

The mayor of one of southern Lebanon's largest cities has been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the city's municipal headquarters during a meeting to coordinate aid deliveries to residents and those displaced by the war.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 16 people were killed and 52 injured in the attack on Wednesday morning in Nabatea. Howaida Turk, the governor of Nabatea province, said that members of the provincial capital's crisis committee were meeting at the time.

It was the worst Israeli attack on a Lebanese state institution since fighting broke out between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah a year ago and after a week of increasing airstrikes across Lebanon.

Efforts to rescue people stuck under the rubble continued into the afternoon.

A state civil defense center in Nabatea was also hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing 50-year-old Naji Fahs, who had worked as a member of the emergency force since 2002. Later in the afternoon, the Lebanese Red Cross said two of its medics were slightly injured after Israel attacked a site in Joya, southern Lebanon, where first responders were trying to rescue people injured in an earlier attack.

Lebanon's acting prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned the attack and said Israel had deliberately targeted municipal employees at a meeting to discuss humanitarian relief efforts.

Late Wednesday, U.N. peacekeepers again accused Israeli forces of firing on their position in a “direct and apparently premeditated” attack.

Peacekeepers in the southern village of Kfar Kila saw an Israeli army tank “shooting at their guard tower,” the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said.

Israel has faced international criticism over a series of incidents in which Unifil positions were attacked, injuring at least five UN force members.

U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert said suffering in Lebanon had reached unprecedented levels and it was essential to “protect civilians at all times.”

Israel said on Wednesday it had struck dozens of Hezbollah targets in the Nabataea area and that its navy had also attacked Hezbollah “launchers, military positions and weapons depots” in southwest Lebanon.

On October 3, Israel ordered people to leave the city, saying it would soon attack Hezbollah facilities in Nabatea. Some residents and displaced people remained there.

Israel increased its airstrikes on Nabatea last week, leveling large parts of the city. An Ottoman-era market dating from 1910 was destroyed in Sunday's bombings.

Turk said: “It's a terrible destruction, the weapons that are used are so destructive. “They damage not only the target areas but also the surrounding areas.”

After several days of calm around the capital, Israel also carried out attacks on Dahiyeh in Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday morning. Israel last attacked Beirut last Thursday, when it leveled an apartment block and killed 22 people. It was the deadliest attack on the capital since 2006.

The attacks contradicted what Mikati had told Al Jazeera just a day earlier that they were U.S. assurances that Israel would reduce its attacks on Beirut.

Meanwhile, the U.N. human rights office on Wednesday called for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike that killed 24 people in the Christian-majority village of Aitou in northern Lebanon on Monday. The strike hit an apartment block rented to families displaced by fighting in southern Lebanon. All those killed were displaced persons.

U.N. human rights spokesman Jeremy Laurence said the U.N. had “real concerns about (international humanitarian law)” surrounding the attack.

Raymond Alwan, an official in Aitou municipality, said the strike had left people there “terrified” and those who had been hosting displaced people feared their homes would be attacked next. Alwan said the community ensures that the rights of the displaced people continue to be respected “on the condition that they do not cause us problems.”

Hezbollah has increased the frequency of its attacks in Israel in recent days despite losing most of its senior military and political leadership. Four soldiers were killed and 54 injured in a drone attack on a military base in northern Israel on Sunday.

Its deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said on Tuesday that the group had adjusted its tactics to inflict renewed damage on Israel.

More than 2,350 people have been killed and 10,906 injured in Lebanon since Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas' attack a day earlier, beginning a year of fighting. Most of the casualties come from fighting last month.