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Lebanon says 13 killed in Israeli strikes in south / Photo: Abbas FAKIH - AFP
Lebanon says 13 killed in Israeli strikes in south
Lebanon's health ministry said 13 people were killed on Friday in Israeli strikes in the south, including in a town where Israel's army had issued an evacuation order despite a ceasefire.
The strikes in Habboush killed eight people, including a child and two women, and wounded 21 others, the ministry said, raising an earlier toll.
Other strikes in Zrariyeh killed four people, two of them women, and wounded four more, it said.
The ministry also reported a strike in Ain Baal near the coastal city of Tyre killed one person and wounded seven others.
In Habboush, where the Israeli evacuation warning was issued, an AFP photographer saw clouds of smoke rising after the raids.
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that Israeli warplanes "launched a series of heavy strikes... less than an hour after" the warning.
Israel's military had said it would act "forcefully" against Hezbollah after the Iran-backed group's "violations of the ceasefire agreement", and told residents to flee to open areas at least one kilometre (0.6 miles) from the town.
The NNA also reported Israeli strikes and artillery fire on other south Lebanon locations, including Tyre.
Israel has kept up deadly strikes on Lebanon despite the April 17 ceasefire that sought to halt more than six weeks of war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The ceasefire text grants Israel the right to act against "planned, imminent or ongoing attacks".
Israeli soldiers are operating inside a "Yellow Line" running some 10 kilometres deep inside Lebanon's border, where they are carrying out wide-scale detonations and demolitions of buildings.
The NNA said Israeli troops carried out detonations in the southern town of Shamaa, and "demolished a monastery and a school" run by a religious order in the town of Yaroun after other detonations of "homes, shops and roads" there.
- 'Fear for their lives' -
Hezbollah claimed a series of attacks on Israeli troops and sites in southern Lebanon on Friday, saying they were in response to Israeli ceasefire violations.
The group drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in March with rocket fire at Israel to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Lebanon's health ministry on Friday raised the toll from Israeli strikes since March 2 to more than 2,600 dead, including 103 emergency workers and paramedics.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' under-secretary general for national society development and coordination, Xavier Castellanos, said that when Lebanese Red Cross volunteers go on a mission, "they fear for their lives".
Two Lebanese Red Cross paramedics are among those killed in Israeli strikes.
"That a person that is trying to save lives, is trying to alleviate human suffering, might be targeted, might be killed... this is something that I found absolutely unacceptable," Castellanos told reporters near Beirut.
D.W.Ernst--BlnAP
