Israel strikes over 3,500 Lebanon targets in month with 1,000 militants dead: military

A man with burn wounds from an Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon in a hospital bed on Thursday.

Photo: AP The Israeli military said Friday it had struck more than 3,500 targets across Lebanon in the month since fighting with the Hezbollah militant group began.

Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war on March 2 after Iran-backed Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel to avenge the US-Israeli attack that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel has responded with massive strikes across Lebanon and a ground offensive.

The Israeli military said on Friday it had killed about 1,000 militants in Lebanon over the past month, with strikes targeting what it described as “terrorist infrastructure, weapons storage facilities, launch positions, and command and control headquarters” belonging to Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday that 1,345 people had been killed and 4,040 wounded since the start of the war, including 1,129 men, 91 women and 125 children.

Tents of internally displaced people at a makeshift camp in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday.

Over one million people have been displaced in the country in recent weeks.

Photo: EPA The ministry said the toll also included 53 healthcare workers.

Hezbollah has so far not announced its losses.

On Thursday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned that Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem would pay an “extraordinarily heavy price” for escalating attacks during the ongoing Jewish holidays. “The Hezbollah terrorist organisation you now lead, and its supporters in Lebanon, will bear the full and severe consequences,” Katz said.

His warning followed claims by Hezbollah that it had carried out a series of rocket attacks on northern Israel late on Wednesday and early on Thursday, as Israeli Jews began marking Passover.

Katz also reiterated that Israeli forces “will clear Hezbollah and its supporters from southern Lebanon, maintain Israeli security control throughout the Litani area, and dismantle Hezbollah’s military capabilities across Lebanon”.

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