Deadly Israeli strikes hit Lebanon and Gaza on Saturday as the US secretary of state headed back to Israel aiming to finalise a Gaza truce agreement, which diplomats say could help avert a wider regional conflagration.
Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon killed 10 people including a Syrian woman and her two children.
The strike was among the deadliest in southern Lebanon since the onset of near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah following the start of the Gaza war in October.
Israel’s military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In Hamas-run Gaza, civil defence rescuers said an Israeli air strike killed 15 people from a single Palestinian family. The deaths in Al-Zawaida, central Gaza, added to a toll that the territory’s health ministry says exceeds 40,000.
“We are in the morgue seeing indescribable scenes of limbs and severed heads and children who are dismembered,” said Omar al-Dreemli, a relative.
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants has displaced most of the territory’s population, destroyed much of the housing and other infrastructure, and left diseases spreading.
The United Nations on Friday appealed for seven-day pauses in the fighting so it could vaccinate children against polio, after the Palestinian health ministry reported Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years.
“We are closer than we have ever been” to a ceasefire in the Gaza war, US President Joe Biden said on Friday, though previous optimism during months of on-off talks has so far proven futile.
On Saturday a senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Biden’s comment is an “illusion”.
The stakes have significantly risen since the killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Their deaths led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.
