30 killed in Israeli strike on Barja
Lebanese rescuers pulled 30 bodies out of the rubble after a late night Israeli strike on an apartment building in the town of Barja, Lebanon's Civil Defense service said Wednesday as the Mideast wars press on with no signs of abating.
It remained unclear if there were any survivors or bodies still trapped under the rubble following the Tuesday night airstrike, which came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military and the strike's intended target also was unknown.
Barja, a town just north of the port city of Sidon in central Lebanon, has not been regularly targeted so far in the conflict.
"Something pulled me hard, and then the explosion happened," said Moussa Zahran, who was at home with his wife and son when the building was hit. He said he couldn't see but started digging through the rubble until he found his wife and son — alive but injured — and pulled them out. Both are still in the hospital, he said.
Another building resident, Muhyiddin Al- Qalaaji, said he was at work when the strike happened and heard the news from his wife who called him frantically.
"There are many dead and injured," he said as he carried out what he could salvage of the family's belongings on Wednesday morning.
Civil defense official Mostafa Danaj said some of the neighbors have reported there are still people missing.
Israeli forces and Hezbollah have been clashing for more than a year, since Hezbollah started firing rockets across the border soon after the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel sparked the ongoing war in Gaza in October last year.
The war on the Lebanese front has substantially escalated since mid-September, with Israel launching a massive aerial bombardment and ground invasion.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 have been wounded in Lebanon, about a quarter of them women and children, the Health Ministry reported.
A report by Lebanon's crisis response unit said that 361,300 Syrians and over 177,800 Lebanese have crossed into Syria between Sept. 23 and Nov. 1, to escape the fighting.
Source: Agence France Presse, Associated Press
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