BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities said Israeli strikes on the country’s south killed at least three paramedics on Wednesday (Apr 15), as the Israeli army announced it had attacked 200 Hezbollah targets over 24 hours.
Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah claimed attacks on northern Israel and invading Israeli troops, a day after Lebanese and Israeli officials agreed to hold direct negotiations.
Israel has not targeted the Lebanese capital since a series of attacks across the country on April 8 that killed more than 350 people, but has kept up deadly strikes on southern Lebanon as troops push a ground invasion.
“I have ordered that all of the area of south Lebanon up to the Litani (River) line be turned into a Hezbollah terrorist kill zone,” Israeli army chief of staff Eyal Zamir said Wednesday during a visit to frontline troops.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel targeted paramedics working in the southern town of Mayfadun “three consecutive times”, killing at least three of them and injuring six others, while one paramedic remains missing.
The ministry said three paramedic teams were attacked, one after another, while trying to rescue people wounded in an initial Israeli strike.
It decried the “flagrant crime, which reflects the Israeli enemy’s determination to prevent paramedics from performing their life-saving work by any means”.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah on March 2, Israel has killed 91 healthcare workers in Lebanon, the ministry said.
The violence has killed more than 2,100 people overall in Lebanon, according to government figures.