Israeli air strikes have killed at least 13 people in southern Lebanon, including two children and a paramedic, Lebanon’s health ministry has said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it launched the air strikes in retaliation for two Hezbollah drone attacks that targeted Israeli troops in Lebanon on Monday.
The bombardment is thought to be the deadliest attack since a ceasefire was agreed in June.
The first strike destroyed a residential building in the town of Kfar Roummane in southern Lebanon, killing 11 people, including two children.
Three generations of one family were killed in the strike, including a two-month-old baby, Al Jazeera reports.
Civil defence workers used heavy machinery through the night to pull the bodies from under the rubble.
A later strike on Rihan, also in the south but further from the border with Israel, killed one person, while a strike on the city of Nabatieh wounded nine including two children and three women.
The second strike hit a vehicle carrying paramedics, killing one and injuring two others, Lebanon’s state news agency reported.
The Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah “infrastructure sites” in response to the launch of two explosive drones towards its troops operating near the Ali al-Taher ridge.
The ridge is a strategic cluster of hills in southeastern Lebanon that the IDF claimed control of over the weekend and where it is thought that Hezbollah built an underground military complex.
The Israeli military said it also struck “several terrorists” seen transferring weapons in the area of Kfar Roummane.
Searching in the rubble in Kfar Roummane after strikes which killed at least 12 – Mahmoud Zayyat/AFP via Getty Images
A woman who said she was related to at least three of the dead said one attack hit a residential building as children were getting ready for school.
At the site, Reuters reporters saw children’s schoolbooks strewn between chunks of concrete where the building once stood.
Residents of Kfar Roummane had only recently returned to their homes after the June ceasefire, according to Lebanese security officials.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the report that “uninvolved individuals” were harmed as a result of the strikes.
The strikes come amid rising fears of a renewed military campaign in Lebanon, despite the framework agreement signed by Israel and Lebanon in June.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has been hanging by a thread since the IDF launched air strikes on southern Lebanon on Aug 5, despite ongoing peace talks to end the war.
A Lebanese soldier inspects destroyed vehicles at the site of an Israeli airstrike – AFP via Getty Images/Mahmoud Zayyat
Joseph Aoun, the Lebanese president, said the “dangerous escalation” was jeopardising the US-brokered ceasefire, which was intended to bring an end to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
He urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop the attacks.
On Sunday, the IDF targeted three towns near the Ali al-Taher ridge, killing at least 11 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
The ministry said the strikes on Sunday destroyed the Ghandour hospital in the town of Nabatieh al-Fawqa.