Women and children among more than 100 killed and 400 wounded by Israeli strikes, Lebanon health ministry says – Middle East crisis live | Israel

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Residents of south Lebanon have begun fleeing north in a renewed wave of displacement as Israeli warplanes pound wide-swathes of the country’s south.

The Israeli aerial assault is the most intense yet, killing over 100 people and wounding over 400 more, including women, children and paramedics, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday.

Roads leading out of south Lebanon were choked with traffic as people fled the Israeli bombing. Areas that have served as safe zones for the displaced since last year have now found themselves within the crosshairs of the Israeli military.

“The airstrikes have reached us, on the outskirts of [Tyre]. There was a strike just 100 meters behind the [displacement] center, there were three of them,” Bilal Kashmar, a coordinator in a displacement center in the southern city of Tyre, said. He showed a video of a plume of smoke rising just across the street from the shelter which houses hundreds of families.

“The displaced have stopped coming to us, those that want to flee are leaving the south entirely,” Kashmar said.

Tyre has hosted thousands of individuals displaced by fighting, as the city has largely been spared by airstrikes until now. Prior to Monday’s fighting, a little over 110,000 were displaced from south Lebanon.

“The airstrikes aren’t stopping. People are scared,” Hassan Dabouk, the head of the Tyre Union of Municipalities, said.

Videos of collapsed buildings, bombs falling from the sky and resulting explosions that shook camera-people’s hands circulated on social media as people tried to track the extent of Israel’s bombing campaign. In one video, a driver films as smoke fills the air on the road ahead following a strike. “Stop, stop, stop!” One of the passengers yell as the video cuts.

“An important thing to note is that the roads are not safe. There is bombing from where we are [in Tyre] all the way to Saida. One needs to think before they leave in this situation,” Dabouk said.

Those who have loved ones in the south made public appeals for any empty apartments or rooms that might host their family members who fled Israeli airstrikes. Spontaneous initiatives to provide housing emerged, with individuals marshaling calls for available rooms and hostels offering discounted rates for displaced people.

“We are collecting numbers right now from people that have connections in safe areas, in Druze and Christian areas”, Faten Jebai, a journalist from south Lebanon, said. Jebai has urged those without a place to reach out to her, as she and other volunteers work to connect displaced those who will open up their homes or rent at low prices.

“More than 80 members of my family are now leaving the south, so I am searching for them but also for my friends and friends of the family,” Jebai added.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has called Israel’s wave of airstrikes “a genocide in every sense of the word.”

Najib Mikati made the comments at the start of a cabinet meeting in Beirut on Monday in which he said that Israel’s airstrikes aim to destroy Lebanon’s towns and villages, according to an update from the Associated Press news agency.

Mikati said that the Lebanese government is calling on the United Nations, the UN Security Council and world nations to “deter the aggression.”

More than 100 people have been killed and 400 wounded, “including women, children and paramedics”, from ongoing Israeli airstrikes in south Lebanon today, the country’s health ministry said. This is the single highest daily death toll since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah started in October.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 50 people were killed and more than 300 wounded, including children, women and medics, in Israeli strikes on Monday that targeted southern Lebanon.

State media reported that in a statement the ministry said “the continued Israeli enemy raids on the southern towns and villages led, in a preliminary toll, to the martyrdom of 50 people and the injury of more than 300, and among the martyrs and wounded were children, women and paramedics.”

Earlier Israel’s military had claimed it had targeted at least 300 Hezbollah locations inside Lebanon. Hezbollah claimed to have fired rockets at Israeli military bases in northern Israel “in response to the Israeli enemy attacks that targeted the south and Bekaa areas”. The IDF said its defense array had incercepted many of at least 35 projectiles it identified coming from Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry has asked all hospitals in the south and east of the country to “stop all non-essential surgery in order to make space to treat the wounded due to the expanding Israeli aggression”.

There were reports of heavy traffic as residents fled the south and educational establishments were closed. Israel appeared to have sent about 60,000 automated phone calls and text messages to citizens in Lebanon ordering them to flee their homes.

Israel’s attack had been forewarned overnight, with Israel’s military announcing it was planning to step up operations. A statement by the IDF’s Arabic language spokesperson had urged Lebanese people to flee their homes in advance of the wave of strikes, and a reported 60,000 automated phone calls were made to residents in Lebanon, telling them to evacuate.

“We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes,” Israel’s defense secretary Yoav Gallant said in a video published by his office on Monday. “These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”

Anticipating casualties, Al Jazeera, citing state media, reports that Lebanon’s health ministry has asked all hospitals in the south and east of the country to “stop all non-essential surgery in order to make space to treat the wounded due to the expanding Israeli aggression on Lebanon.”

More details soon …

Israel’s military has said it has struck 300 Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon since this morning. Lebanese media has reported airstrikes on multiple locations, with wounded being transported to hospitals. At least one person is known to have been killed.

The attack had been forewarned overnight, with Israel’s military announcing it was planning to step up operations. A statement by the IDF’s Arabic language spokesperson had urged Lebanese people to flee their homes in advance of the wave of strikes, and a reported 60,000 automated phone calls were made to residents in Lebanon, telling them to evacuate.

Unverified videos posted to social media have shown multiple large explosions and chaotic scenes. Arabic news sources have described Israel “carpet bombing” areas of Lebanon in a “relentless” series of attacks.

Alongside the update, the IDF published an image of its chief of staff approving the wave of airstrikes from the military’s underground command room in Tel Aviv.

“We are deepening our attacks in Lebanon, the actions will continue until we achieve our goal to return the northern residents safely to their homes,” Israel’s defense secretary Yoav Gallant said in a video published by his office on Monday. “These are days in which the Israeli public will have to show composure.”

Reuters reports the Unifil peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon told the news agency it had “seen an intensification of bombardments throughout the area of operations, close to the Blue Line,” referring to the line separating the two countries.

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

About 60,000 calls were made across all of Lebanon which played a pre-recorded message instructing people to evacuate their homes, Imad Kreidieh, the chairman of Ogero, which operates Lebanon’s telecommunications infrastructure, said.

“What the Israelis are doing is sending a bunch of automated voice recordings through international carriers, the system doesn’t recognise them as Israeli calls, most of them are generated as calls coming from a friendly country”, Kreidieh told the Guardian. He added that it was an “old technique” also used by Israel during its July 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Ogero has “located the source of the calls and will stop it,” Kreidieh said.

Lebanon’s minister of information Ziad Makari earlier said in a statement on Monday morning that work in the ministry is “continuous and normal” after he received one of the calls. “The method is not strange to the Israeli enemy, which uses all means in its psychological warfare. We call to not lend the matter more [attention] than it deserves,” Makari said.

Lebanon’s minister of culture also reported receiving a call from someone speaking “classical Arabic in a strange accent” warning that he should leave his office immediately as he could be a target.