The Middle East War > Strike 5 - day 2 - Israeli planes hammer south Lebanon for another day

 

More than 550 killed, 1,800 injured as Israel

continues air campaign against Hezbollah

By Paul Godfrey

Rescuers at work Tuesday in a six-story residential building after an Israeli military strike on the Ghobeiry district in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where a number of people were said to have been injured. Media in Israel and Lebanon reported that Israel Defense Forces were trying to kill the head of Hezbollah's missile unit, but the IDF said only that it had conducted a "targeted strike" in Beirut. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE

Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The death toll in Lebanon from a major outbreak of cross-border conflict between Israel and Hezbollah climbed to 558 including at least 50 children and 94 women, with more than 1,800 injured as the fighting entered a second day.

"We remain in the war and remain in the throes of the attacks. Our responsibilities have not ended," Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad told a news conference in Beirut on Tuesday.

Abiad said four first responders were among those killed after 14 ambulances and firetrucks were hit by Israeli forces with the total number of people injured on Monday alone standing at 1,835.

So, does that mean that more than 1800 were injured on each day?

Lebanese government coordinator of emergency preparedness Nasser Yassine told CNN that airstrikes had forced 16,500 people to flee their homes in the past day with 150 schools being converted into temporary shelters for the displaced.

The grim statistics came as Israel said it had completed a second wave of airstrikes across the Bekaa Valley, east of Beirut, and southern Lebanon designed to degrade Hezbollah's capability to fire rockets into its territory.

"Among the targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization were buildings in which weapons were stored, command centers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites," Israel Defense Forces said.

The IDF pointed to secondary explosions that it had identified as proof that "large amounts of weapons were stored in the buildings."

Israeli fighter squadrons had flown hundreds of "attack sorties" over the past day targeting 1,500 terrorist infrastructures in the interior and south of Lebanon with almost 2,000 weapons to "remove a threat and harm the capabilities of Hezbollah," the Israeli Air Force said in a post on X.

However, Hezbollah continued firing at Israel throughout Monday with more than 100 rockets fired at the north.

Incoming rocket sirens went off in Afula, Nazareth and other communities across northern Israel around 2:40 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

In Lebanon, reports emerged mid-afternoon local time of people injured in an airstrike on a residential block in the Beirut suburbs that was supposedly directed at the head of Hezbollah's missile unit, the Times of Israel reported.

Times of Israel reported that it was unknown if the commander was caught in the attack on the known Hezbollah stronghold in the suburb of Dahiyeh but noted that it was the fifth time Israel had struck the capital since the current upsurge in the conflict.

The Guardian reported the National News Agency as saying a number of people had been hurt in the attack that targeted a six-story building in the Ghobeiry district of the capital.

Rescue teams were working to reach residents trapped in the building in which three floors were destroyed with footage circulating online showing an angry crowd in a smoke-filled, debris-strewn road in the city with a body atop a car that appeared to have been blown out of the building by the blast.

Aides to U.S. President Joe Biden said he was working around the clock to de-escalate the situation.

Biden has never really contributed anything to the resolution of the Middle East conflict. As long as he, or Harris, think a two-state solution will solve anything, they will never contribute anything useful.

Ahead of an address he was scheduled to make to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in New York, the BBC reported that the administration was planning to take the opportunity presented by having world leaders in one place at the same time to "try to find an off-ramp."

Washington had "concrete ideas" to head off the crisis, a senior official was quoted as saying.

The developments came as the Pentagon responded to the crisis with the announcement on Monday that it was deploying a "small" but unspecified number of additional U.S. troops to the region to "augment" forces already there on the ground.

EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell warned Monday of full-fledged war.

"Escalation is extremely dangerous and worrying. I can say that we are almost in a full-fledged war. We're seeing more military strikes, more damage, more collateral damage, more victims."

Civilians in Lebanon were paying an "intolerable, unacceptable price," he added.

Israel launched what it called "extensive strikes" targeting Hezbollah weapons hidden inside people's homes early Monday issuing warnings to civilians living in or near buildings used by the Iran-backed group to leave, in what it said was a response to signs Hezbollah was preparing to fire toward Israel.

However, it later said the strikes were part of an operation to stop an Oct. 7-type invasion by Hezbollah of northern Israel called "Conquer the Galilee" that would see its fighters infiltrate communities and massacre civilians.