Israeli strike kills Lebanese mayor at meeting
to coordinate aid deliveries
================================================

The mayor of one of the largest cities in
southern Lebanon has been killed in an Israeli
airstrike that hit the city's municipal
headquarters during a meeting to coordinate aid
deliveries to residents and those displaced by
war.

The strike, one of a series on Nabatieh on
Wednesday morning, killed 16 people and wounded
52, the Lebanese health ministry said. Howaida
Turk, the governor of Nabatieh province, said
members of the provincial capital's crisis
committee were meeting at the time.

It was the most significant Israeli hit yet on a
Lebanese state institution since fighting
between Israel and the Lebanese Shia militia
Hezbollah broke out a year ago, and followed a
week of intensifying aerial bombardment across
Lebanon.

Efforts to rescue people stuck under the rubble
stretched into the afternoon.

A government civil defence centre in Nabatieh
was also hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing
50-year-old Naji Fahs, who had worked as a
member of the emergency response force since
2002. Later in the afternoon, the Lebanese Red
Cross said two of its paramedics were lightly
injured after Israel struck a site in Joya,
south Lebanon, where first responders were
trying to rescue people injured in a previous
attack.

Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib
Mikati, condemned the attack, saying Israel had
intentionally targeted municipal employees while
they were meeting to discuss humanitarian aid
efforts.

Late on Wednesday, UN peacekeepers again accused
Israeli forces of firing on their position in a
"direct and apparently deliberate" attack.

Peacekeepers in the southern village of Kfar
Kila saw an Israeli army tank "firing at their
watchtower", the United Nations Interim Force in
Lebanon (Unifil) said.

Israel has faced international criticism for a
series of incidents in which Unifil positions
have been targeted, injuring at least five
members of the UN force.

The UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine
Hennis-Plasschaert, said suffering in Lebanon
had reached unprecedented levels and that it was
imperative to "protect civilians at all times".

Israel said on Wednesday that it had hit dozens
of Hezbollah targets in the Nabatieh area and
that its navy had also hit Hezbollah "launchers,
military positions and weapons caches" in south-
west Lebanon.

On 3 October, Israel ordered people to leave the
city, saying it would soon attack Hezbollah
installations in Nabatieh. Some residents and
displaced people remained there.

Israel has stepped up its airstrikes on Nabatieh
over the past week, levelling swathes of the
city. An Ottoman-era market that dated back to
1910 was destroyed in the bombings on Sunday.

Turk said: "It's terrible destruction, the
weapons that are being used are so destructive.
They are damaging not only the targeted areas
but also the surroundings."

Israel also carried out strikes on Dahiyeh in
the southern suburbs of Beirut on Wednesday
morning after several days of calm around the
capital city. Israel last struck Beirut last
Thursday, when it levelled a block of flats and
killed 22 people in the deadliest strike on the
capital city since 2006.

The strikes defied what Mikati had told Al
Jazeera just a day earlier were assurances given
by the US that Israel would reduce its attacks
on Beirut.

Meanwhile, the UN's human rights office on
Wednesday called for an investigation into an
Israeli airstrike that killed 24 people on
Monday in the Christian-majority village of
Aitou, in northern Lebanon. The strike hit a
residential block rented out to families
displaced from fighting in Lebanon's south. All
of those killed were displaced people.

The UN human rights spokesperson Jeremy Laurence
said the UN had "real concerns with respect to
[international humanitarian law]" surrounding
the strike.

Raymond Alwan, an official in the Aitou
municipality, said the strike had left people
there "terrified" and that those who had hosted
displaced people feared their homes would be
struck next. Alwan said the municipality was
ensuring that the rights of displaced people
would still be respected, "under the condition
that they do not bring us any problems".

Hezbollah has stepped up the frequency of its
attacks in Israel in recent days, despite the
loss of most of its senior military and
political leadership. A drone attack on a
military base in northern Israel on Sunday
killed four soldiers and wounded 54.

Its deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem, said
on Tuesday that the group had adjusted its
tactics to cause renewed damage to Israel.

More than 2,350 people have been killed and
10,906 wounded in Lebanon since Hezbollah fired
rockets at Israel on 8 October 2023 in
solidarity with Hamas's attack a day earlier,
starting a year of fighting. Most of the
casualties are from the last month of fighting.



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