The United Nations humanitarian office on Monday called for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike that killed 23 people in northern Lebanon.
Spokesman Jeremy Lawrence said the attack in the Christian-majority village of Aitou raised “serious concerns” regarding international humanitarian law.
Lawrence said 12 women and two children are understood to have been killed in the bombing, which destroyed a residential building recently rented to families evacuated from the south.
Rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the rubble in Aitou on Tuesday, far from the previous center of conflict in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and parts of Beirut.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not yet commented on the attack.
Ellie Aruwan, the owner of the house in Aitou, told reporters that the house was rented out to a family of about 10 people, who have since added about 10 more people.
Alwan said the tenants had no problems until a car arrived at the house on Monday, the day of the airstrike, when the driver appeared to be delivering cash.
Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah members in areas where Hezbollah normally operates have driven them to other parts of the country, raising fears across Lebanon that Israeli targets are everywhere.
Sarkis Alwan, a resident of Aitou, told AFP news agency that the village “probably… no longer welcomes” the displaced people. “And the villagers hosting the refugees will be asked to leave,” he said.
Israel has fired residential buildings without warning in a recent escalation in efforts to undermine Hezbollah, which has sporadically fired rockets into Israel for a year since the day after the October 7, 2023, attack on Hamas. Showing willingness to attack buildings.
An Israeli airstrike hit a house in central Beirut on Thursday night, killing 22 people, according to Lebanese Health Ministry figures.
Unconfirmed reports said the attack, which took place without warning, injured 117 people and targeted Wafik Safa, a senior member of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, a powerful force in Lebanon.
The attack reportedly failed to kill him, but Hezbollah has not commented on his status.
Israel says it needs to fight Hezbollah in order for people in the north to return to their homes.
Hezbollah’s drone attack on a military base in northern Israel on Sunday killed four Israeli soldiers and seriously injured seven more. It was the group’s deadliest attack since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.
Also on Tuesday, the United Nations refugee agency announced that more than a quarter of Lebanon is now subject to Israeli military evacuation orders.
“People are heeding calls to evacuate and are fleeing with almost nothing,” Rema Jamous Imseis, the agency’s Middle East director, told a news conference.
The evacuation order, combined with Israel’s ground invasion and bombing campaign, led to a large-scale exodus of Lebanese from the affected areas.
According to the Lebanese government, more than 1.2 million people have been evacuated. They fled villages and major cities in the south and moved north to Beirut, Tripoli, and other cities.
Many people have been kept in unsafe and unsanitary conditions in evacuation centers in and around the capital, and schools and shops have been closed to accommodate them.
The mayor’s office told the BBC that the sheer number of displaced people has overwhelmed welfare services, leaving thousands of people abandoned on the streets.
Mayor Abdallah Dulwich told the BBC last week that the city had prepared for just 10% of its actual population, using plans made during the previous invasion in 2006.
“I never imagined it would be this big,” he says. “Our calculations are getting bigger every day.”
Israeli military attacks on Beirut, centered on the southern suburbs of Dahiyeh, have become daily and nightly over the past three weeks, but the capital has not been attacked for nearly five days.
On Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US government had expressed “concerns” to the Israeli government about the “scope and nature” of the Beirut bombing in recent weeks.
“Israel has the right to protect itself from terrorists who pose a threat to the State of Israel, but we were deeply concerned by the nature of the operations we have seen unfold across Beirut over the past few weeks.” he stated. Said.
“We have seen a decline (in the number of strikes) in the last few days,” he added.
Following Sunday’s Hezbollah drone attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday night threatened to continue “relentless” attacks on the group in Lebanon, including in Beirut.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a telephone conversation with President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday evening that he opposes “a unilateral ceasefire that does not change the security situation in Lebanon and returns Lebanon to its previous state.”
Earlier in the day, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem issued his own threat to Israel, saying the group was making “new calculations” to inflict pain on its enemies.
At the same time, Qassem called for a ceasefire in a televised speech, saying it was the only solution to the current conflict. “If the Israelis don’t want it, we will continue,” he added.
At least 2,309 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes over the past year, according to Lebanese government statistics, which do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.
Israel announced that about 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, were killed.
