ISRAELI attacks on southern Lebanon have killed at least two children and wounded 40 people, according to Lebanese health officials.
In a statement, the Ministry of Public Health said an Israeli strike on Habbush killed two girls and wounded 22 people on Saturday.
In a separate statement, it said an attack on al-Hawsh near the coastal city of Tyre wounded 18, including a child, three women and three paramedics. The ministry had previously said the strike on al-Hawsh damaged a nearby major hospital.
The director of the Lebanese Italian Hospital told the state-run National News Agency (NNA) on Saturday that the facility would “remain open to provide the necessary medical care” despite the damage.
Overnight strikes destroyed two buildings near the hospital, according to the AFP news agency. They also shattered windows in the hospital and caused suspended ceilings to collapse, the facility’s management said.
Tens of thousands of people have left Tyre since Israel renewed attacks on Lebanon and launched a ground invasion on March 2 after Hezbollah responded to the February 28 killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli attack. Some 20,000 people remain in the city, including 15,000 displaced from surrounding villages, despite Israel’s forced evacuation threats covering most of Tyre and a swath of the south.
Hours after the attack, the Israeli army struck three buildings in and around the city, according to the NNA.
One of the attacks hit an 11-storey building northeast of Tyre, completely destroying it and reducing it to a pile of rubble that covered a nearby gas station, AFP reported. A second raid on a five-storey building near the city levelled half of it, leaving the other half standing. The third strike was on the Burj al-Shamali Palestinian refugee camp, southeast of the city.
Another Israeli air attack destroyed a mosque in the town of Baraashit in the Bint Jbeil district, the NNA reported, along with other bombings across the south.
The NNA also reported that Israeli forces abducted a man in the Lebanese town of Shebaa near the Israeli border in the southeast.
Meanwhile, Israel continued to press forward with a ground invasion.
Israeli forces blew up houses in several southern front-line villages and towns, including Aita al-Shaab and Ramyah, and bombed bridges linking Samar with Mashghara, claiming they were being used by Hezbollah.
The bombing of bridges and other civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon has been widely condemned. Rights groups have warned that Israel appears to be trying to isolate the region.
Al Jazeera Arabic also reported that Israeli forces carried out an air attack on the town of al-Qatrani in the Jezzine district of southern Lebanon and Israeli air attacks hit the towns of Yohmar and Sahmar in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Later on Saturday, Israel’s military said that a soldier was killed during combat in southern Lebanon.
Despite the continued offensive, Heiko Wimmen, a project director for Lebanon, Iraq and Syria at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that Israel is unlikely to achieve its stated goal of disarming Hezbollah.
“We know that [disarming] Hezbollah is not on the cards, and so we’re seeing an open-ended occupation evolving before our eyes,” he said.
Hezbollah maintains depth in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, Wimmen said, but added that even if Israel manages to push the group out of these areas, it would not necessarily mean that it would have eliminated Hezbollah entirely.