BARJA, Lebanon: Lebanese rescuers scoured a destroyed apartment building south of Beirut on Wednesday for bodies or any survivors after a deadly Zionist strike the previous evening, as exchanges of fire between the Zionist entity and armed group Hezbollah pressed on.

Hezbollah said it had fired a salvo of missiles on Wednesday at a military base in the Zionist entity near Ben Gurion Airport. Sirens sounded in northern and central Zionist entity and the Zionist media reported a rocket had landed near the airport. The airports authority said it was continuing to operate as usual and the entity’s leading airline El Al said none of its planes were damaged from rockets hitting near the center of the entity.

The Zionist entity and Hezbollah have exchanged fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war but the entity escalated its assault on Lebanon, intensifying bombing and making ground incursions into border villages. The strike on Tuesday on Barja hit a multi-storey apartment building on a hilltop, shearing off segments of the floors and exposing inner walls and staircases. Lebanon’s health ministry said just before midnight that the strike had killed 20 people and wounded 14, but said the toll could still rise.

Moussa Zahran, who lived on one of the upper floors of the building, returned on Wednesday morning to sift through the ruins of his home. His burned feet were wrapped in gauze and his son and wife were in hospital after being wounded in the strike. “These rocks that you see here weigh 100 kilos, they fell on a 13 kilo kid,” he said, referring to his son and the apartment wall that had collapsed onto him during the strike.

Strikes on Nabatieh

There was no evacuation warning ahead of the air raid. On Wednesday, the Zionist entity’s military carried out strikes on the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh after issuing evacuation orders for specific neighborhoods in the city. There were no immediate reports of casualties. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Zionist strikes on Lebanon over the last year, the vast majority in the past six weeks. The Barja attack was among the deadliest single strikes.

Diplomatic efforts to reach a 60-day truce proposed by the US faltered last week, and Lebanese were fearful that the war could escalate further after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Israel Katz as his new defense minister. Katz vowed on Tuesday to “defeat” Hezbollah so that Zionists displaced from occupied areas on the border with Lebanon could return.

Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri met the US and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon on Wednesday to discuss political developments, his office said, without providing further details. Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister meanwhile congratulated the “president elect” in the US, without naming Donald Trump. — Reuters