Israeli strikes kill 16 in south Lebanon, including paramedics

BEIRUT

A series of Israeli airstrikes across southern Lebanon on Wednesday killed at least 16 people, including paramedics, in one of the deadliest days of fighting in the Israel-Lebanon border since the war in Gaza broke out nearly six months ago.

A barrage of rockets also killed one Israeli and was claimed by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which said it was responding to a deadly airstrike targeting a paramedic center linked to a Sunni Muslim group.

International mediators have been scrambling to prevent an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah amid near-daily violence, mostly confined to the area along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets toward Israel since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, triggering the war in Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and another 250 people abducted.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza and 74,000 wounded, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tally. The ministry says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.

Hezbollah, an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 triggering war in Gaza.

Hezbollah said they fired "dozens of rockets" at Kiryat Shmona in retaliation for what it called "the massacre committed by the Zionist enemy [Israel]" in the south Lebanon village of Habariyeh.

The emergency response arm of Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese militant group closely linked to Hamas, said "a number" of people were killed in the overnight Israeli strike in Habariyeh.