274 killed, 1024 wounded in Lebanon in deadliest day since October
More than 200 people, including women and children, were killed Monday and more than 1000 were wounded as the Israeli military said it had targeted more than 300 Hezbollah sites in Lebanon in an unprecedented wave of air strikes.
"So far more than 300 Hezbollah sites have been targeted" since Monday morning, the military said in a statement. It earlier said more than 150 air strikes were carried out within just one hour, between 6:30 am and 7:30 am.
Israeli warplanes targeted several southern towns for the first time since October 7.
The health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south and east killed 274 people and wounded more than 1024, in the worst toll by far in nearly a year of cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.
"Israeli enemy strikes on southern towns and villages since this morning" have killed "182 people and wounded 727 others", the health ministry had said, with casualties including "children, women and paramedics".
An Israeli military official said Israel is focused on aerial operations and has no immediate plans for a ground operation. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with regulations, said the strikes are aimed at curbing Hezbollah's ability to launch more strikes into Israel.
Hundreds of people in south Lebanon fled the bombardment, a local official said.
Bilal Kachmar, an official at the disaster management unit in Tyre, said "hundreds of displaced people rushed to" a school-turned-shelter in the southern city, with many others "camping out in the streets". AFP correspondents in the south saw rows of cars leaving nearby Sidon.
Lebanon health ministry told meanwhile hospitals in south and east Lebanon to halt all non-urgent surgeries in order to handle the wounded from intense Israeli strikes, while schools in Beirut's southern suburbs and south and east Lebanon halted classes and evacuated students.
The ministry "asks all hospitals" in south and east Lebanon districts "to stop all non-essential surgery in order to make space to treat the wounded due to the expanding Israeli aggression on Lebanon", a health ministry statement said.
Caretaker Education Minister Abbas Halabi on Monday said schools in Lebanon's east and south as well as in Beirut's southern suburbs would shut for two days as Israeli strikes intensified.
In a statement, Halabi "announced the closure of public and private schools" Monday and Tuesday in the areas due to "security and military situations" that "pose a danger to the movement of students".
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet, Associated Press
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