Israeli strike on Lebanon kills entire family – media

An attack on an apartment block in the north of the country on Monday reportedly claimed 23 lives, with six more injured

An Israeli airstrike on northern Lebanon on Monday killed 23 members of the same family, with six more people sustaining severe injuries, several media outlets have reported. The attack hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito, located in a predominantly Christian region, away from the Hezbollah militant group’s main strongholds.

The Israel Defense Forces launched a ground operation in the neighboring country late last month. The UN high commissioner for refugees estimated that more than 2,200 people had been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, when cross-border attacks by both Israel and Hezbollah escalated after the start of the war in Gaza.

According to the authorities in Beirut, some 1.2 million people have now been displaced across Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that 23 refugees from the south of the country had perished as a result of the Israeli strike on the village of Aito the day prior.

PBS’ special correspondent in the Middle East, Leila Molana-Allen, claimed that all 23 victims were members of the same family, with six more surviving the strike but remaining in critical condition. “Nearly an entire family line [was] wiped out in a moment,” she alleged, noting that the family had fled to northern Lebanon after their Shiite village in the south “was relentlessly bombarded” by Israeli forces.

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The outlet Arab News carried a similar report, quoting a local MP as alleging that a member of the family was a Hezbollah militant.

In a statement on Tuesday, Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said: “What we’re hearing is that amongst the 22 people who were killed were 12 women and two children.”

The UN representative noted that the Israeli attack could be in breach of international humanitarian law, as well as the “laws of war and principles of distinction, proportion and proportionality.”

“In this case, [OHCHR] would call for a prompt, independent and thorough investigation into this incident,” Laurence concluded.

When asked by a reporter to comment on Monday’s airstrike, US Department of State spokesperson, Matthew Miller said on Tuesday that he could not “speak to the circumstances around that particular strike.” He added, however, that “obviously the loss of civilian life is extremely troubling, and we’ve made that clear to the government of Israel.”

That same day, Naim Kassem, the acting leader of Hezbollah, vowed to ramp up missile strikes on major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv and Haifa.