The ministry said one of the strikes in Nabatieh al-Fawqa “totally destroyed” the out-of-service Ghandour hospital, decrying “another grave violation of international humanitarian law”.
Israel’s army said it targeted Hezbollah operatives and infrastructure, including “weapons storage facilities and terrorist structures”, as well as “a Hezbollah command centre that had been established inside a building previously used as a hospital”.
It had earlier issued its first evacuation notice in Lebanon in a month, warning residents near a building it called a Hezbollah facility in Arab Salim to leave ahead of an attack on the site.
It did not issue warnings for other areas where strikes were reported.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said that after the Israeli warning for Arab Salim, “enemy warplanes launched a strike on another house, destroying it” and killing the two women.
It said the Israeli military subsequently carried out a strike on the building threatened in the evacuation warning.
At the scene of the second strike, an AFP correspondent saw the ruins of a devastated villa, with large decorative columns laying on their side next to stairs littered with rubble.
Haidar Haidar, the brother of the building’s owner, told AFP that nobody had been living inside.
At the other site in Arab Salim where the two women were killed, a mattress, furniture and other items including a Hezbollah flag were strewn among the rubble, while neighbouring buildings were also damaged.