Patients in Gaza hospitals beg for food and water as they lie ‘waiting to die,’ WHO official says

Patients in Gaza hospitals beg for food and water as they lie ‘waiting to die,’ WHO official says
Patients and internally displaced people are pictured at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
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Updated 18 January 2024
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Patients in Gaza hospitals beg for food and water as they lie ‘waiting to die,’ WHO official says

Patients in Gaza hospitals beg for food and water as they lie ‘waiting to die,’ WHO official says
  • Sean Casey paints grim picture of broken healthcare system amid surge in number of wounded and continuing restrictions on delivery of humanitarian aid
  • He calls for a ceasefire as only way to prevent more injuries and allow the sick and wounded in hospitals to receive proper treatment

NEW YORK CITY: More than 60,000 Palestinians injured so far during the war in Gaza, and the more than 200 people added to their ranks each day, not only continue to be deprived of adequate medical care, they are also in desperate need of food and water to survive, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The UN agency painted a grim picture of a healthcare system brought to its knees amid the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the territory and continuing restrictions on access for humanitarian aid and healthcare workers, particularly to areas north of Rafah where “every movement throughout the Gaza Strip requires coordination. Every movement presents risks and logistical challenges.”

Sean Casey, the WHO’s emergency medical team coordinator, called for a ceasefire as the only way to properly address the new “level of desperation” in the crisis, adding that anything short of an end to the hostilities simply leaves humanitarian groups “addressing needs on a day-by-day basis.”

He added: “Every day we’re trying to play catch up with the 60,000 injuries and the 200-plus new injuries that are occurring every day, and a health system that is quickly losing its capacity.

“So what I would ask anybody who has any ability to change this dynamic is (for) a cessation of hostilities so that the injuries can stop and the aid can reach the people who need it the most. But short of that: improving access, simplifying access.”

Casey was speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters in New York following a five-week visit to Gaza. During the final week of his trip, he said his team tried “every single day, for seven days, to deliver fuel and supplies to Gaza City in the north, and every day those requests for coordinated movements were denied.

“That prevents us from bringing medicines to people who need them, from bringing water for dialysis machines to people who were sitting there waiting for care that can be provided. So access and safety are the most important.”

Casey spoke of the dire situation he saw during visits to Al-Shifa hospital and six of the 16 other hospitals that are the only ones that remain “minimally” functional out of the 36 that previously provided care in Gaza.

“Every time I went to the hospitals I saw evidence, again and again, of the simultaneous humanitarian catastrophe that’s unfolding, every day getting worse and worse, and the collapse of the health system day by day, with hospitals closing, health workers fleeing, casualties continuing to stream in, lack of access to medicines and medical supplies, and a lack of access to fuel to run hospital generators to keep the lights on, to keep the machines running,” he said.

This is happening alongside a “dramatic humanitarian catastrophe” in which “truckloads and busloads” of people continue to flee each day with all of their belongings to southern Gaza, where shelters made of “plastic sheeting and a couple of pieces of wood on the street now become their new home.”

The challenges posed by access restrictions imposed on humanitarian workers and limitations on their movement continue to hobble efforts by the WHO to deliver desperately needed medicines to hospitals that are still open, and to deploy additional doctors and nurses to help meet the “enormous demand of trauma patients, but also patients with every other clinical presentation that you would normally see,” such as “the pregnant women who still need antenatal care and who still need to deliver, and the people who require dialysis.”

Although Casey was able to visit Al-Shifa hospital, for 12 days his team was unable to deliver to it any food or medical supplies. With more than 700 beds, it is the most important healthcare facility in Gaza but has been “brought down to become a trauma-stabilization point,” he said.

“The whole hospital was filled with tens of thousands of displaced persons, living in the operating theaters, in the corridors, in the stairways. And the emergency department was seeing hundreds of patients a day, mostly trauma, with only a handful, literally five or six doctors or nurses, to care for all of those people.”

Casey said he saw “patients on the floor, so many you could barely move without stepping on somebody’s hands or feet.”

He spoke of patients at Al-Ahli hospital, also in northern Gaza, lying on church pews “basically waiting to die” in a hospital with no fuel, no power, no water, very little in the way of medical supplies and only a handful of staff remaining to take care of them.

Further south, at Al-Nasr medical complex in Khan Younes, only about 30 percent of staff remain, Casey said, and the facility is at about 200 percent of its bed capacity, with patients crammed into corridors and lying on floors. In its burns unit, one physician provides care for about 100 patients.

“So its a really horrifying situation in the hospitals,” he added.

He also described the challenges faced every day in attempts to organize aid convoys to deliver desperately needed fuel and relief supplies, and to send more surgeons, doctors and nurses to the hospitals “to try to save life and limb, to avoid unnecessary amputations, to treat the many children that I saw with terrible shrapnel injuries and gunshot wounds, and to establish field hospitals.”

Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, now hosts about 1 million displaced people, an almost four-fold increase on the 270,000 that were there just a few weeks ago.

The area “doesn’t have the healthcare infrastructure to deal with this huge influx of internally displaced persons,” Casey said. “It doesn’t have the physical space to host these people. They’re on the sidewalks, on the street.”

He said the WHO is working to set up additional field hospitals and provide more healthcare workers to replace those who were forced to flee for their lives, and to meet the significantly increased burden of care created by injuries and illnesses caused by the conflict and the atrocious living conditions. Displaced people who have lost most of their possessions are forced to sleep in tents with little or no access to the basic requirements for life, including food, clean water, heat and proper shelter, exposing them to infectious diseases, he added.


Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes

Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes
Updated 09 November 2024
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Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes

Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes
  • The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short

JERUSALEM: With virtually no food allowed into the northernmost part of Gaza for the past month, tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli siege are rationing their last lentils and flour to survive.
As bombardment pounds around them, some say they risk their lives by venturing out in search of cans of food in the rubble of destroyed homes.
Thousands have staggered out of the area, hungry and thin, into Gaza City, where they find the situation a little better.
One hospital reports seeing thousands of children suffering from malnutrition. A nutritionist said she treated a pregnant woman wasting away at just 40 kilograms (88 pounds).
“We are being starved to force us to leave our homes,” said Mohammed Arqouq, whose family of eight is determined to stay in the north, weathering Israel’s siege. “We will die here in our homes.”
Medical workers warn that hunger is spiraling to dire proportions under a monthlong siege on northern Gaza by the Israeli military, which has been waging a fierce campaign since the beginning of October.
The military has severed the area with checkpoints, ordering residents to leave.
Many Palestinians fear Israel aims to depopulate the north long term.
On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening.
The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week for a 30-day request the administration of President Joe Biden gave Israel: raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.
The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short.
In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, according to figures from Israel’s military agency overseeing aid entry, known as COGAT. In the first week of November, the average was 81 a day.
The UN puts the number even lower — 37 trucks daily since the beginning of October.

It says Israeli military operations and general lawlessness often prevent it from collecting supplies, leaving hundreds of truckloads stranded at the border.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.
But he said Israel must do more.
“It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads,” he said.
Israeli forces have been hammering the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya refugee camp.
Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.
A trickle of food has reached Gaza City.
However, as of Thursday, nothing entered the towns farther north for 30 days, even as an estimated 70,000 people remain there, said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, speaking from Gaza City.
The government acknowledged in late October that it hadn’t allowed aid into Jabaliya because of military “operational constraints” in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups. On Saturday, COGAT said it allowed 11 trucks of food and supplies into Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. But Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the WFP, said Israeli troops at a checkpoint forced the convoy to unload the food before it could reach shelters in Beit Hanoun.
It was not clear what then happened to the supplies.
Palestinians in the north described a desperate daily struggle to find food, water, and safety as strike-level buildings, sometimes killing whole families.
Arqouq said he goes out at night to search bombed-out buildings: “Sometimes you find a half-empty package of flour, canned food, and lentils.”
He said his family relies on help from others sheltering at a Jabaliya school, but their food is also running low.
“We are like dogs and cats searching for their food in the rubble,” said Um Saber, a widow.
She said she and her six children had to flee a school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya when Israel struck it. Now they live in her father-in-law’s home, stretching meager supplies of lentils and pasta with 40 others, mostly women and children.
Ahmed Abu Awda, a 28-year-old father of three living with 25 relatives in a Jabaliya house, said they have a daily meal of lentils with bread, rationing to ensure children eat.
“Sometimes we don’t eat at all,” he said.
Lubna, a 38-year-old mother of five, left food behind when fleeing as strikes and drone fire pummeled the street in Jabaliya.
“We got out by a miracle,” she said from Beit Lahiya, where they’re staying.
Her husband scavenged flour from destroyed homes after Israeli forces withdrew around nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, she said. It’s moldy, she said, so they sift it first.
Her young daughter, Selina, is visibly gaunt and bony, Lubna said.
The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel seeks to empty northern Gaza and hold it long-term under a surrender-or-starve plan proposed by former generals.
Witnesses report Israeli troops going building to building, forcing people to leave toward Gaza City.
On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered new evacuations from several Gaza City neighborhoods, raising the possibility of a ground assault there.
The UN said some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering there.
Food and supplies are also stretched for the several hundred thousand people in Gaza City.
Much of the city has been flattened by months of Israeli bombardment and shelling.
Dr. Rana Soboh, a nutrition specialist at Gaza City’s Patient Friend Benevolent Hospital, said she sees 350 cases of moderate to severe acute malnutrition daily, most from the north and also from Gaza City.
“The bone of their chest is showing, the eyes are protruding,” she said, and many have trouble concentrating.
“You repeat something several times so they can understand what we are saying.”
She cited a 32-year-old woman shedding weight in her third month of pregnancy — when they put her on the scale, she weighed only 40 kg.
“We are suffering, facing the ghost of famine hovering over Gaza,” Soboh said.
Even before the siege in the north, the Patient Friend hospital saw a flood of children suffering from malnutrition — more than 4,780 in September compared with 1,100 in July, said Dr. Ahmad Eskiek, who oversees hospital operations.
Soboh said staff get calls from Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya pleading for help: “What can we do? We have nothing.”
She had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north but fled with her family to Gaza City. Now, they stay with 22 people in her uncle’s two-bedroom apartment.
On Thursday, she had had a morsel of bread for breakfast and later a meal of yellow lentils.
As winter rains near, new arrivals set up tents wherever they can.
Some 1,500 people are in a UN school already heavily damaged in strikes that “could collapse at any moment,” UNRWA spokesperson Wateridge said.
With toilets destroyed, people try to set aside a classroom corner to use, leaving waste “streaming down the walls of the school,” she said.
She said that others in Gaza City move into the rubble of buildings, draping tarps between layers of collapsed concrete.
“It’s like the carcass of a city,” she said.

 


Child, pregnant woman among 7 killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre

A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
Updated 09 November 2024
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Child, pregnant woman among 7 killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre

A resident checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Tyre, southern Lebanon, Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. (AP)
  • PM Mikati gains support in efforts to end Lebanon conflict on eve of OIC summit
  • Israel accused of ‘scorched-earth policy’ after 22 border towns devastated

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that seven people, including a child and a pregnant woman, were killed and 46 others injured in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre the previous day, with rescuers still searching for those missing under the rubble.

Repeated airstrikes on the city’s neighborhoods brought down buildings, trapping residents.

The strikes hampered civil defense rescue efforts during the night. Rescuers resumed work early on Saturday in search of the missing.

Israeli airstrikes on the city of Nabatieh devastated one of the country’s most important heritage homes owned by the late former minister Rafiq Shaheen.

Another heritage home belonging to Kamal Daher, which previously served as the headquarters for the Cultural Council of South Lebanon, was also destroyed.

Airstrikes targeting the western Bekaa region killed six people.

Hezbollah continued its military operations, and Israeli media reported in the afternoon that several rockets landed in Metula, damaging a house.

The group said it targeted a military gathering on the border of the settlement.

Airstrikes on the south continued along with Hezbollah’s responses.

Mohammed Shamseddine, a researcher from Information International, said that Israel had so far destroyed 22 border towns out of 29 locations along the 120 km front stretching from Ras Al-Naqoura in the west, through the western and central sectors, and reaching the Shebaa farms in the east, near the Syrian border.

Shamseddine accused Israel of “adopting a scorched-earth policy in these areas.”

He said Israel was “destroying everything and leaving no signs of life to prevent residents from returning to any potential settlement in the future.”

Shamseddine estimated that up to 44,000 housing units had been destroyed, with the cost of reconstruction reaching $4.2 billion.

Hostilities continued as the Supreme Islamic Shariah Council emphasized Lebanon’s need to “restore its decision, role, power, and status, and implement the constitution and the Taif agreement.”

The council said that it stands by “caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s efforts to overcome the ordeal faced by Lebanon and contain the consequences of the Israeli aggression against the country.”

The council’s stance came on the eve of Miktai’s departure for Riyadh to take part in the extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Saudi Arabia is convening the talks to address Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the resulting devastation.

The Shariah Council, which includes all Sunni segments, called for “the need to live within the state, accept the idea of the state, respect its laws and constitution, and subject oneself to its authority.”

The council said that “outside the state, we are conflicting groups, communities, and tribes,” adding that “the state of the constitution, institutions, and human dignity can save Lebanon and restore its economic stability, advancement, and prosperity.”

The council, led by Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, met on Saturday with Mikati.

It called on the UN Security Council to “secure an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, compel Israel to implement the ceasefire, and apply the UN Charter, which calls for pacific settlement of disputes.”

It added that Israel no longer abided by the charter, and should lose its UN membership.

The Shariah Council urged “the Security Council to answer the Lebanese state’s call and immediately implement UN Resolution 1701 in full, thereby ensuring the end of the war and enabling the Lebanese armed forces to exercise their national right to defend Lebanon, while providing them with all the capabilities and possibilities to fulfill this role.”

The council criticized Hezbollah’s support indirectly, saying that “what has happened and is still happening now is a challenging test that we hope we have learned from, as it has led to the destruction of the whole country.”

The council urged “the state, with all its institutions, and all Lebanese to support the displaced people, provide them with resilience and health care means, and preserve civil peace.”

Israeli hostilities against Lebanon escalated in the past 24 hours.

A video featuring several Israeli soldiers invading houses in southern Lebanon was shared on social media, prompting widespread anger among Lebanese.

Israeli media reported on Saturday afternoon that explosions were heard after sirens sounded in the Krayot and Western Galilee, adding that Hezbollah fired 10 rockets targeting Nahariya, Acre, and Krayot.

Hezbollah said that it shot down a Hermes 450 drone with a surface-to-air missile over Deir Seriane and that Israeli warplanes attacked the town.

The southern suburbs of Beirut and the southern region experienced intense Israeli assaults from Friday night into early Saturday.

For two hours, 14 airstrikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Targeted locations included Hadath, Burj Al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, and the Al-Jamous neighborhood, with operations extending to the area surrounding the Lebanese University building in Hadath.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that the “airstrikes, guided by precise intelligence from the military intelligence agency, targeted command centers, a weapons production site, and other infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut.”

The assertion made by the Israeli army that it avoids targeting civilians by issuing prior evacuation warnings did not hold for the southern region, particularly in Tyre.

 

 


Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index

Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index
Updated 09 November 2024
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Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index

Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index
  • Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020

LONDON: Jordan jumped to 27th on the latest Global Cybersecurity Index, up from 71st position four years earlier, the head of its National Cybersecurity Center said on Saturday.

Speaking at the Jordan Economic Forum, Bassam Maharmeh attributed the improvement to the introduction of a cybersecurity law in 2019 and the establishment of the NCC. He also highlighted the importance of cybersecurity amid Jordan’s digital transformation.

Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020, putting it in the “T1 — Role-modeling” category.

Forum president Mazen Hamoud said the progress made would enhance Jordan’s appeal among investors and boost private sector confidence.

A 2023 report by the International Monetary Fund said there had been more than 20,000 cyberattacks on the global financial sector in the past two decades, with losses of more than $12 billion.

The NCC provides round-the-clock monitoring of data traffic and advanced services like penetration testing and emergency response. It also supports institutions and fosters youth engagement through training camps and competitions, the Jordan News Agency reported.

The rise through the 2024 rankings was the result of a unified effort involving the Ministry of Education, universities and the Central Bank of Jordan, the report said.


While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity

While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
Updated 09 November 2024
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While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity

While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
  • According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September
  • Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian

BEIRUT: Hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees have returned to their country since Israel launched a massive aerial bombardment on wide swathes of Lebanon in September. Many who fled to Lebanon after the war in Syria started in 2011 did not want to go back.
But for officials in Lebanon, the influx of returnees comes as a silver lining to the war between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million in Lebanon. Some in Syria hope the returning refugees could lead to more international assistance and relief from western sanctions.
’I wasn’t thinking at all about returning’
Nisreen Al-Abed returned to her northwest Syrian hometown in October after 12 years as a refugee in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The airstrikes had been terrifying, but what really worried her was that her 8-year-old twin daughters need regular transfusions to treat a rare blood disorder, thalassemia.
“I was afraid that in Lebanon, in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to get blood for them,” Al-Abed said.
During their dayslong journey, Al-Abed and her daughters were smuggled from government-held to opposition-held territory before reaching her parent’ house. Her husband remained in Lebanon.
“Before these events, I wasn’t thinking at all about returning to Syria,” she said.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September. Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian.
Most of the returnees are in government-controlled areas of Syria, according to UNHCR, while tens of thousands have made their way to the Kurdish-controlled northeast and smaller numbers to the opposition-controlled northwest.
Political leaders in Lebanon, which was hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees before the recent wave of returns, have been calling for years for the displaced to go home, and many don’t want the refugees to return.
Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar told Russia’s Sputnik News last month that the war in Lebanon could yield “a positive benefit, an opportunity to return a large number of displaced Syrians to their country, because the situation there is now better than here.”
A political opening for Syria?
Officials in Damascus point to increasing economic pressure from the masses fleeing Lebanon as an argument for loosening western sanctions on President Bashar Assad’s government.
Syria was already suffering from spiraling inflation, and the sudden influx of refugees has driven prices up even more, as have Israeli strikes on border crossings that have slowed legal cross-border trade and smuggling.
“Everyone knows that Syria is suffering from difficult economic conditions: hyperinflation, import inflation, and an economic blockade,” said Abdul-Qader Azzouz, an economic analyst and professor at Damascus University. The influx of refugees just “increases the economic burden,” he said.
Alaa Al-Sheikh, a member of the executive bureau in Damascus province, urged the US to lift sanctions on Syria because of the huge number of arrivals.
“The burden is big and we are in pressing need of international assistance,” she said.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the treatment of returning refugees. The Jordan-based Syrian think tank ETANA estimates at least 130 people were “arbitrarily arrested at official border crossings or checkpoints inside Syria, either because they were wanted for security reasons or military service,” despite a government-declared amnesty for men who dodged the draft.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and professor at the European University Institute in Florence, noted the number of arrests is small and that Assad’s government might not view the returnees as a threat because they are mostly women and children.
Still, Daher labeled government attempts to show the returning refugees are welcome as “propaganda,” saying, “they’re unwilling and not ready in terms of economics or politics to do it.”
UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said this week that his agency is working with the Syrian government “to ensure the safety and security of all those arriving,” and he urged donors to provide humanitarian aid and financial assistance to help Syria recover after 13 years of war.
A temporary return
UNHCR regional spokeswoman Rula Amin said if people leave the country where they are registered as refugees, they usually lose their protected status.
Whether and how that will be applied in the current situation remains unclear, Amin said, underscoring the exodus from Lebanon took place “under adverse circumstances, that is under duress.”
“Given the current situation, the procedure will need to be applied with necessary safeguards and humanity,” she said.
Jeff Crisp, a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center and a former UNHCR official, said he believes Syrians are entitled to continued international protection “because of the grave threats to their life and liberty in both countries.”
Some refugees have entered Syria via smuggler routes so their departure from Lebanon is not officially recorded, including Um Yaman, who left Beirut’s heavily bombarded southern suburbs with her children for the city of Raqqa in eastern Syria.
“When I went to Syria, to be honest, I went by smuggling, in case we wanted to go back to Lebanon later when things calm down, so our papers would remain in order in Lebanon,” she said. She asked to be identified only by her honorific (“mother of Yaman”) to be able to speak freely.
If the war in Lebanon ends, Um Yaman said, they may return, but “nothing is clear at all.”


More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say

More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say
Updated 09 November 2024
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More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say

More than 20 killed as Israeli strikes pound towns in Lebanon, Lebanese officials say
  • At least 16 more people were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday across the eastern plains around the historic city of Baalbek
  • The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,136 people and wounded 13,979 in Lebanon over the last year

BEIRUT: Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon over the last day have killed more than 20 people including several children, Lebanese authorities said on Saturday, after heavy Israeli bombardment pounded the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut overnight.
At least seven people were killed in the coastal city of Tyre late on Friday, Lebanon’s health ministry said. The Israeli military has previously ordered swathes of the city to evacuate but there were no orders published by the Israeli military spokesperson on social media platform X ahead of Friday’s strikes.
The ministry said two children were among the dead. Rescue operations were ongoing and other body parts retrieved in the aftermath of the attack would undergo DNA testing to identify them, the ministry added.
At least 16 more people were killed in Israeli strikes on Saturday across the eastern plains around the historic city of Baalbek, the area’s governor said in a post on social media platform X.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Lebanese health ministry said Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,136 people and wounded 13,979 in Lebanon over the last year. The toll includes 619 women and 194 children.
Israel has been locked in fighting with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah since October 2023, but fighting has escalated dramatically since late September of this year. Israel has intensified and expanded its bombing campaign, and Hezbollah has ramped up daily rocket and drone attacks against Israel.
The Iran-backed group announced more than 20 operations on Saturday, as well as one that it said fighters carried out the previous day against a military factory south of Tel Aviv.
More than a dozen Israeli strikes also hit the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight, once a bustling collection of neighborhoods and a key stronghold of Hezbollah.
Now, many buildings have been almost entirely flattened, with Hezbollah’s yellow flags jutting out from the ruins, according to Reuters reporters who were taken on a tour of the area by Hezbollah.
Some buildings were partially damaged by the strikes, leading some floors to collapse and sending furniture and other personal belongings spilling onto parked cars below.
Men and women were picking through the rubble for their belongings, shoving blankets and mats under their arms or into black plastic bags.
“We are trying to gather as many (of our possessions) as we can, so we can manage to live off them, nothing more,” said Hassan Hannawi, one of the men looking for his belongings.