|
Listen to article
|
Forty nations contributing to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately,” said the joint statement, posted on X and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.
At least five peacekeepers were wounded by Israeli fire in the past 48 hours as Israel takes its fight against Hezbollah into southern Lebanon.
Read Also: Taiwan On Alert After Spotting Chinese Aircraft Carrier
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes on two villages Saturday, one north of Beirut and another to the south, killed at least nine people, as state media reported further strikes elsewhere.
An “Israeli enemy strike on Maaysra”, a Shiite Muslim majority village in a mostly Christian mountain area north of Beirut, killed “five people and wounded 14 others”, the ministry said in a statement.
Separately, it said that “four people were killed and 14 others wounded” in an “Israeli enemy strike” on Barja in the Shouf district south of the capital.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called on Hezbollah to end its strikes on Israel, after Israel’s army said a barrage of projectiles were launched from Lebanon over the Yom Kippur holy day.
Lebanese official media said an Israeli strike on Saturday targeted a marketplace in Nabatiyeh, an important south Lebanon city located around 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the Israeli border.
“Israeli warplanes… carried out a strike that targeted the centre of the marketplace” in Nabatiyeh, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, after Israel’s army last week told residents to evacuate the city.
Israel’s military said on Saturday its forces had attacked roughly 280 “terror targets” during combat operations in Lebanon and Gaza over the Yom Kippur weekend.
The Israeli air force “struck approximately 280 terror targets belonging to both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Among these targets were underground terror infrastructure sites, weapons storage facilities, military command centres, terrorist cells,
A top United Nations official said during a visit to Beirut Saturday that he is concerned that Lebanon’s ports and airport might be taken out of service, with serious implications for getting food supplies into the county, as Israel continues its offensive against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
“What I have seen and heard today is devastating, but the sense is that this can get much worse still, and that needs to be avoided,” said Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Program, in an interview with The Associated Press
