BEIRUT: Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli strikes on the south killed 182 people and wounded more than 700 Monday, 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 said, with casualties including "children, women and paramedics". War began when Palestinian groups carried out the attack on Israel, with groups around the region, chiefly Hezbollah, increasingly drawn into the violence.
On Monday, Israel said it had hit more than 300 Hezbollah sites with dozens of strikes, while Hezbollah said that it had targeted three sites in northern Israel. The strikes on Lebanon, which also wounded more than 400 people according to the health ministry, were the deadliest in nearly a year of violence along the border with Israel.
"Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning... killed 100 and injured more than 400," the health ministry said in a statement, adding that "children, women and paramedics" were among the dead and wounded.
World powers have implored Israel and Hezbollah to pull back from the brink of all-out war, with the focus of violence shifting sharply from Israel's southern front with Gaza to its northern border with Lebanon in recent days.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told people in Lebanon to avoid potential targets linked to Hezbollah as strikes would "go on for the near future". Hagari said Israel's military "will engage in (more) extensive and precise strikes against terror targets which have been embedded widely throughout Lebanon".
Ahead of the annual General Assembly in New York, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned of Lebanon becoming "another Gaza" and said it was "clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire" there.
Lebanon's official National News Agency reported "more than 80 air strikes in half an hour" early Monday targeting the south of the country, as well as intense raids in the Bekaa Valley to the east.
Meanwhile, two strikes by Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians, including four children, in the central Gaza Strip on Monday, medics said, as heavy rains flooded displaced residents' tent encampments. Palestinian health officials said at least five Palestinians were killed at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, one of Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps.
More than 41,300 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault, according to the Gaza health ministry. — Agencies
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