4 killed, 40 injured in Israeli attacks on S. Lebanon-Xinhua

BEIRUT, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) -- Four people, including a Lebanese army soldier, were killed and 40 others injured in Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon on Sunday, according to the Lebanese army and a source in the Lebanese Red Cross.

In southwestern Lebanon, one Lebanese army soldier was killed and 18 others injured, including some wounded badly, on Sunday morning in an Israeli airstrike targeting a Lebanese army post "in Ameriya on the Qleileh-Tyre road, and the post was also severely damaged," the Lebanese army said in a statement on social media platform X.

Lebanese security sources, who spoke anonymously, told Xinhua that several 155-millimeter artillery shells fired by Israel hit an army checkpoint, injuring soldiers and causing a fire in a warehouse belonging to the checkpoint.

Members of the Lebanese Red Cross worked to transfer the injured to hospitals in the city of Tyre, while members of the Civil Defense worked to extinguish the fire, the sources said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said that Israel's attack against the Lebanese army conveys a bloody message that Israel rejects all efforts to reach a ceasefire.

"The Israeli enemy's direct targeting of an army center in the south today, and the fall of martyrs and wounded, represents a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts to reach a ceasefire, strengthen the army's presence in the south, and implement international resolution 1701," Mikati said in a statement released by the Lebanese Council of Ministers.

As of Sunday, the death toll among Lebanese army ranks has reached 41 since the beginning of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict on Oct. 8, 2023, according to one Lebanese security source.

In two other separate attacks in southeastern Lebanon, an Israeli raid targeted a neighborhood in the town of Machgharah on Sunday morning, killing two and wounding 22 others, whereas an Israeli tank fired a shell at the home of a civilian in the town of Ibl al-Saqi, leaving the civilian dead, a responsible source in the Lebanese Red Cross told Xinhua.

Since Sept. 23, the Israeli army has intensified its air attack on Lebanon in an escalation of conflict with Hezbollah. Israel further initiated a ground operation across its northern border into Lebanon in early October. ■