BEIRUT: Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley overnight killed more than 60 people across a dozen towns, the district governor said on Tuesday (Oct 29), the deadliest day yet in the area in more than a year of hostilities.
Rescue workers were still pulling bodies out of the rubble on Tuesday morning.
Israel has ramped up its air strikes across Lebanon over the last month, saying it is targeting Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. Lebanese officials, rights groups and residents of affected towns say the strikes are indiscriminate.
No evacuation orders were given for any of the towns struck overnight. District governor Bachir Khodor said 67 people had been killed and more than 120 wounded and the death toll was expected to rise.
“That’s only the people who’ve been removed from under the rubble and we still don’t have the final toll. This is the most violent day for Baalbek in the last year,” Khodor told Reuters.
The toll included nine people killed in Ram, its mayor Nazih Noun said, including a woman and her four children.
“It’s quiet now, but we don’t know how we can carry on with the funerals given the security situation,” Noun told Reuters.
