Child, Professor, Aid Worker Among Dozens Killed in Israeli Strikes on Lebanon

A 4-year-old child, a university professor and an aid worker died in separate Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon as a single day's bombardment left dozens more dead and wounded, stretching from Beirut's city center to the eastern Bekaa Valley and the southern coastline.

Lebanon's Health Ministry reported that Israel has killed 968 people and injured 2,432 in its attacks since the war started. More than one million people have been forced from their homes. Lebanese authorities counted 111 children among the dead since March 2, when full-scale strikes resumed after Hezbollah launched rockets into northern Israel.

The breadth of Tuesday's strikes illustrated how thoroughly the offensive had penetrated civilian life. Israel attacked a building in Bashoura, a neighbourhood in the heart of Beirut, as part of a deadly wave of strikes that killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens of others, with raids stretching from the capital through southern and eastern parts of the country. In the capital's Basta and Zokak al-Blat districts, the Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 12 people were killed and 41 wounded in three strikes. Al-Manar TV said its political programs director, Mohammad Shari, and his wife were killed in the Zokak al-Blat strike; the channel added that his children and grandchildren were wounded and admitted to hospital.

The strikes were not confined to Beirut. Three people were killed and eight remain missing in Habboush in southern Lebanon, with rescue teams still searching the rubble. Two people were killed, including a paramedic, and one was wounded in an Israeli air strike on a car near Sidon's waterfront. In the Sidon-area village of Qanaarit, three more were killed in a strike on their home. Two people were killed and seven wounded, including a child, in a strike on a residential building in Deir al-Zahrani. Two more died and several were wounded when a strike hit a site of the Islamic Health Authority in the Bir al-Salasil area of Khirbet Salam.

In eastern Lebanon, the death toll from an Israeli air strike on a residential building in the Ras al-Ain neighbourhood of Baalbek rose to four people killed and seven wounded. Six people died when warplanes struck and destroyed five homes in the town of Sohmor in the western Bekaa, the state news agency NNA reported. Four Syrians were killed in the town of Jibchit in Nabatieh. The Civil Defense Directorate said 11 civil defense personnel were wounded when a strike hit near their center in Nabatieh.

Lebanon's health minister condemned what he called "the severe material damage" to three public hospitals and a Lebanese civil defense center in the country's south, where 11 health workers were wounded in the attacks. The ministry statement underscored a pattern that has alarmed international observers: the systematic targeting of infrastructure serving civilian populations.

Israeli warplanes struck bridges over the Litani River that link southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, destroying at least two of them. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed the attacks, and the Israeli military said it targeted the bridges to prevent Hezbollah from transferring fighters and weapons.

Israel's military renewed its call for residents to evacuate a region stretching more than 40 kilometres from the Lebanon-Israel border, a day after announcing "limited" ground operations were underway in the south. Israel began ground operations in southern Lebanon on March 16. An evacuation order was also issued for Tyre and surrounding areas, where around 11,000 people displaced from other parts of southern Lebanon had already taken refuge.

The displacement crisis has overwhelmed the country's shelter capacity. More than 130,000 people are staying in official shelters. Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reported that 90 percent of government shelters were full, and that people staying in those shelters had already seen their homes destroyed, particularly those from the southern suburbs of Beirut and southern Lebanon. One shelter worker described the conditions: "Lots of people are coming every day to ask for shelter but we don't have space anymore, we can't accept them."

The Israeli military said its strikes targeted Hezbollah operatives, naming Ali Hussein al-Mousawi as killed in eastern Lebanon, claiming he had purchased and transferred weapons from Syria to Lebanon, and identifying Abed Mahmoud al-Sayed, described as a local Hezbollah representative in the village of Ras Biyyada, as killed in a Naqoura strike. There was no confirmation from Hezbollah about the alleged deaths.

The United Nations warned that Israeli attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure may constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. UNIFIL separately said that an Israeli drone dropped a grenade close to one of its patrols near Kfar Kila, followed by a tank shot, adding that Israel's actions were "in violation of Security Council Resolution 1701 and Lebanon's sovereignty, and show disregard for safety and security of the peacekeepers implementing Security Council-mandated tasks in southern Lebanon."

Lebanon's National News Agency also reported that an Israeli drone strike on a Lebanese University building in Hadath, near Beirut, killed two academics — a detail that placed the professor among the dead in a country where universities, hospitals and apartment buildings have all become strike sites within the span of a single campaign.