Bint Jbeil (Lebanon): An Israeli strike targeting a motorcycle in southern Lebanon on Monday hit next to a hospital entrance, killing at least one person and wounding several civilians who were gathered outside, local health officials said. The strike killed the motorcycle driver in the town of Bint Jbeil. It was not immediately clear who the driver was.
The Israeli army did not immediately give a statement on the strike but said it had targeted other areas of southern Lebanon in response to terrorist launches. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been exchanging strikes with Israeli forces in the border area almost daily since Oct 8, a day after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began.
Mohammed Suleiman, director of the Salah Ghandour Hospital in Bint Jbeil, said they had received one person killed and nine wounded in the strike, most of whom were civilians who were in front of the hospital, where family members and people accompanying the patients usually gather.
Two of the wounded were in highly sensitive condition, he said. The strike also caused minor damage to the hospital, an Associated Press photographer at the scene said.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people in Lebanon since the war in Gaza began, most of them militants with Hezbollah and allied groups but also including more than 70 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, strikes from Lebanon have killed 15 soldiers and 10 civilians.
The clashes have displaced tens of thousands on each side of the border. Western countries, in particular the US and France, have come forward with a series of proposals for a cessation of hostilities on the Lebanon-Israel border. Hezbollah has refused to enter into an agreement until a cease-fire is implemented in Gaza.
Initially, the proposals stipulated that Hezbollah would move its forces several kilometers away from the border, but a French diplomatic official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing negotiations said the latest proposal has abandoned this idea as Hezbollah would not agree to it unless Israel also halted its overflights in Lebanese airspace.
Instead, the new proposal would rely on a strengthened presence of the official Lebanese army and UNIFIL peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon to enforce the cessation of hostilities, with a long-term aim of negotiations for demarcation of the land border between Lebanon and Israel. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was expected to arrive in Beirut on a diplomatic visit Tuesday.
