Women and children among dozens of Syrians killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon

Most of the people in building hit in raid were members of a single family, says mayor

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli air strike on Baalbek on Wednesday. AFP

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Israeli strikes on the eastern Lebanese town of Younine have killed 20 people, including 19 Syrian citizens, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Thursday, and most of the victims were women and children, the town's mayor told The National.

“Among those killed were around eight women and eight children,” mayor Ali Qusas said. “It was the second raid on Younine that day. The town has been struck around 10 times since Monday but still has some residents living there.”

Lebanon's News agency NNA reported that the overnight strikes hit a building housing Syrian workers, near a motorway petrol station close to Baalbek in Lebanon’s north-eastern Bekaa Valley, which runs along the Syrian border. Most of the people inside the building were members of one family, Mr Qusas added.

The death toll of Syrians in Lebanon over the past 72 hours has risen to 103, including 23 women and 32 children, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.

On Monday Israel launched a massive aerial campaign, killing more than 700 people, and displacing hundreds of thousands from the south and the Bekaa Valley.

Lebanon is home to about 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in 2011, according to UN figures. Thousands of Lebanese and Syrian families have been displaced by the escalating violence in Lebanon, UN officials say, with many waiting for hours in heavy traffic to seek refuge in Syria – a country still reeling from its own conflict.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said 13,500 Syrians have returned to Syria in recent days. The Lebanese government has opened schools and technical institutions to host thousands displaced by the Israeli strikes, but reports have claimed that some shelters were denying access to Syrians.

In an interview with The National on Wednesday, Lebanon's Economy Minister Amin Salam said all families fleeing the Israeli shelling, Lebanese or Syrian, are eligible for aid, but that “priority is being given to Lebanese people”.

The status of Syrians in Lebanon remains a highly sensitive issue, especially since 2019, when Lebanon plunged into what the World Bank has described as one of the worst economic crises in centuries.

At least 72 people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Wednesday, Lebanon's Health Ministry said. Lebanese state media described the strikes as the most violent in the area so far.

Israeli military chief Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said the past days of intense bombing were meant “both to prepare the ground for possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah”.

Diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel are intensifying. US President Joe Biden has focused on the possibility of a ceasefire “in almost every conversation he had with world leaders” during this week’s UN General Assembly, a White House official told Reuters. Mr Biden on Tuesday told the UN General Assembly that he holds out hope for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday denied reports of ceasefire talks with Hezbollah. “The news of a ceasefire is not true,” it said.