BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in northern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military and it was not clear what the target was. The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito, which is part of the country’s Christian heartland in the north and far from the Hezbollah militant group’s main areas of influence in the south and east.
Videos from Lebanese media showed a large plume of smoke rising from the hilly village, with several destroyed cars next to a severely damaged building, as people tried to remove bodies from beneath rubble and trees.
The strike came a day after a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the army base and soldiers injured in the attack, vowing that “we will continue to strike Hezbollah without compassion in every part of Lebanon, including in Beirut.”
Sixty-one people were wounded in Sunday’s attack. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel over the past year, killing more than 60 people, although Israel says most have been intercepted by its air defense systems or hit open areas.
In Lebanon, some 2,300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since last October, according to the country’s Health Ministry. More than three-quarters of the deaths occurred in the past month.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, has vowed to keep up its attacks on Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza. Israel has said its campaign against Hezbollah is aimed at stopping those attacks so displaced Israelis can feel safe returning to their homes near the Lebanese border.
A strike and an inferno in a Gaza hospital courtyard
Earlier on Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns.
The Israeli military said the strike in Gaza targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
