Lebanon: Two girls killed in Israeli airstrikes, Israeli soldier killed

Two girls were killed and 40 people wounded by Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon on Saturday, the Health Ministry announced, while Israel reported a soldier killed "in combat" in the region.

In Habbouche, a village near Nabatiyeh, the main southern city, two little girls were killed by an Israeli strike that also injured 22 other people, the ministry said.

The Israeli army announced the death "in combat" of a 21-year-old soldier in southern Lebanon, where it has begun a ground invasion saying it wants to neutralize the pro-Iranian Hezbollah.

On the coast, the city of Tyre and its surroundings were targeted by several bombings during the day, one of which, according to the ministry, damaged one of the city's main hospitals.

The Israeli army notably struck three buildings which it had ordered to be evacuated earlier, according to the official news agency, ANI.

A five-story building was half destroyed, and another 11-story building collapsed, according to an AFP correspondent.

Some 20,000 people, including about 15,000 displaced from neighboring villages, are still in Tyre, despite repeated Israeli evacuation orders, which have forced tens of thousands of people onto the roads.

Lebanon was drawn into the regional war on March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel to avenge the US-Israeli attack that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Israeli strikes have killed 1,422 people, including 126 children, according to the latest official figures on Saturday, and displaced more than one million.

The Israeli army lost 11 soldiers, including the one who died on Saturday.

- A damaged hospital -

Earlier on Saturday, two strikes almost completely destroyed two buildings near the Italian-Lebanese hospital in the Al-Houch sector of Tyre, according to an AFP correspondent who saw debris littering the streets, a burnt-out car and smoke rising from the affected buildings.

These Israeli bombings injured 18 people, including three rescuers and a child, and damaged the hospital, according to an updated report from the Ministry of Health.

Despite the damage, the hospital "will remain open," its director, Youssef Jaafar, told the ANI.

The port of Tyre was also targeted. A strike hit a tourist boat and damaged fishing boats, according to an AFP correspondent.

Further east, in Baraachit, a strike destroyed the city's mosque, the ANI reported.

Destroyed bridges

At dawn, several Israeli strikes also targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, an AFP journalist observed.

The Israeli army claimed to have struck "command centers" of the Lebanese section of the Quds Force - responsible for the external operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard - and to have targeted "two headquarters of Palestinian Islamic Jihad".

It also again bombed the bridge linking Sohmor to Machghara, on the Litani River in the Bekaa (east), which it had targeted on Friday evening, after a warning, saying it wanted to prevent "the transfer of reinforcements and weapons" to Hezbollah.

In the southern town of Shebaa, Israeli troops abducted a resident from his home overnight, the ANI also reported, without specifying his fate.

According to the Agency, this is the third abduction of this type since March 2nd.

Hezbollah, for its part, claimed to have targeted border towns in northern Israel, including Kiryat Shmona and Misgav Am, and Israeli positions in Lebanon.

Caught in a vice in the south of the country, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) announced on Friday that three Blue Helmets had been injured, two of them seriously, in an explosion of unknown origin.

Indonesia denounced an "unacceptable attack" after the UN representation in Jakarta confirmed that the injured were Indonesian.

A UN security source told AFP on Saturday that the Israeli army had destroyed 17 surveillance cameras at the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura in 24 hours;

AFP