BEIRUT: Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Thursday even as the two countries agreed to a 10-day ceasefire.
An Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Ghazieh has killed at least seven people and wounded 33, the health ministry said, hours before the ceasefire took effect.
Lebanese state media reported a "massacre against civilians" in the town, noting that rubble removal operations are ongoing, AFP reported. The health ministry said its toll is "preliminary and not final."
Three people were also killed in Adloun and more than 20 injured, the ministry said, according to state news agency NNA.
The Lebanese army said Thursday that Israeli strikes that destroyed the Qasmiyeh bridge over the southern Litani River have cut off the area from the rest of the country.
“In the context of the ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon, the Qasmiyeh-Tyre coastal bridge was targeted and destroyed, with the aim of separating the area south of the Litani from its north and isolating it,” the army said in a statement, adding that the strikes killed one person and wounded three others, among them “a soldier from the unit stationed on the bridge.”
The ceasefire will take effect at 2100 GMT and aims to stop more than a month of fighting between Iran backed Hezbollah and the Israeli military. Israel's strikes have killed at least 2,000 people in Lebanon and displaced more than a million.
- With AFP
