Israeli Strikes Kill 21 In Lebanon, Nabatiyeh

Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across Lebanon, killing at least 21 people, officials said Wednesday, including more than a dozen in a southern town where Israeli bombardments in previous conflicts are seared into local memory.

Elsewhere in the south, a city’s mayor was among the dead in a strike that Lebanese officials said targeted a meeting coordinating relief efforts.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes late Tuesday on the southern town of Qana, where 15 people were killed.

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Associated Press photos and video of the scene showed several flattened buildings and others with their top floors collapsed.

Rescue workers carried away the remains of dead people and used a bulldozer to remove rubble, as they searched for more victims.

In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more people, including four UN peacekeepers.

During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children.

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Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

“Qana always gets its share,” Mayor Mohammed Krasht told the AP, referring to the town’s grim history.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, meanwhile accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a municipal council meeting to discuss relief efforts in Nabatiyeh, where six people were killed.

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“What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he asked in a statement.

The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah command centers and weapons facilities that had been embedded in civilian areas of Nabatiyeh in Wednesday’s strikes, without providing evidence.

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Israel also resumed its barrage on Beirut’s southern suburbs after a six-day pause, hitting what it said was an arms warehouse under an apartment building, without providing evidence.

The military warned residents to evacuate before the strike, and there were no reports of casualties.