Israeli strikes kill at least 14 in Lebanon’s far north as attacks spread

# Israeli strikes kill at least 14 in Lebanon’s far north as attacks spread

An Israeli strike on a residential building in Ain Yaaqoub in Lebanon’s far north killed at least 14 people and injured 15 others, according to local officials, in one of the northernmost attacks reported in the country since fighting escalated.

The building reportedly housed around 30 people, including Syrian refugees and Lebanese families displaced from other parts of the country. That made the strike especially significant, because Ain Yaaqoub had become a place where people fled for safety rather than a center of fighting itself.

The same day brought more violence elsewhere in Lebanon. The health ministry said an Israeli raid in Haret Saida, near Sidon, killed at least seven people and injured seven more. Additional reports described a strike on Ghaziyeh that hit a residential building and left a child rescued from the rubble. Other strikes were reported near a hospital in Tebnin, where the facility suffered damage.

Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah-linked facilities in the Baalbek area, showing that the campaign was continuing across several parts of the country at once. Hezbollah, meanwhile, fired about 165 rockets into northern Israel, and the Israeli rescue service said six people were injured, including a one-year-old child.

The political and military context keeps widening. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the border region and repeated his demand that Hezbollah be pushed back beyond the Litani River. That position has become central to Israel’s stated war goals in the north.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said at least 3,243 people had been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023, including 54 in the previous 24 hours at the time of the reporting. Those numbers underscore how quickly the toll has climbed as strikes move beyond the immediate front line.

The Ain Yaaqoub attack also stood out because of who was sheltering there. Reporting said displaced people from southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Bekaa Valley had fled to the area. The strike therefore hit a place that was already part of the displacement map of the war.

With rocket fire continuing into Israel and Israeli strikes hitting farther north in Lebanon, the conflict shows no sign of staying contained to one zone. The latest attacks suggest the war is now reaching people who had moved precisely because they thought they were out of the danger zone.