Three paramedics killed in south Lebanon, Israel says 200 Hezbollah targets hit
Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least three paramedics, with the health ministry saying Israel attacked rescue teams “three consecutive times”.
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BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities said Israeli strikes on the country's south killed at least three paramedics on Wednesday (Apr 15), as the Israeli army announced it had attacked 200 Hezbollah targets over 24 hours.
Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah claimed attacks on northern Israel and invading Israeli troops, a day after Lebanese and Israeli officials agreed to hold direct negotiations.
Israel has not targeted the Lebanese capital since a series of attacks across the country on April 8 that killed more than 350 people, but has kept up deadly strikes on southern Lebanon as troops push a ground invasion.
"I have ordered that all of the area of south Lebanon up to the Litani (River) line be turned into a Hezbollah terrorist kill zone," Israeli army chief of staff Eyal Zamir said Wednesday during a visit to frontline troops.
Lebanon's health ministry said Israel targeted paramedics working in the southern town of Mayfadun "three consecutive times", killing at least three of them and injuring six others, while one paramedic remains missing.
The ministry said three paramedic teams were attacked, one after another, while trying to rescue people wounded in an initial Israeli strike.
It decried the "flagrant crime, which reflects the Israeli enemy's determination to prevent paramedics from performing their life-saving work by any means".
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah on March 2, Israel has killed 91 healthcare workers in Lebanon, the ministry said.
The violence has killed more than 2,100 people overall in Lebanon, according to government figures.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported separate Israeli strikes Wednesday on two vehicles, both on the coastal highway around 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Beirut and outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds.
An AFP photographer saw a burned-out van with firefighters working to extinguish the blaze.
Rescue workers were recovering human remains from the wreckage of the vehicle and its surroundings, and the army had established a security perimeter, causing a massive traffic jam on this major thoroughfare, the photographer added.
NNA also reported several other strikes across southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese foreign ministry announced Wednesday that it had asked its representative to the UN "to submit an urgent complaint to the Security Council and the Secretary-General" over the April 8 strike wave.
A diplomatic source told AFP last week that there was European and Arab pressure on Israel to refrain from striking Beirut.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, had detected "approximately 30 launches" by Hezbollah towards Israel since the early hours of Wednesday, a spokesman told AFP.
Hezbollah said it launched rockets at northern Israel.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah on Wednesday said the group's fighters "are preventing enemy soldiers from seizing control" of the key southern town of Bint Jbeil, five kilometres north of Israel.
The Israeli army had said on Tuesday that 10 soldiers were wounded in the town, which it says it encircled.
Wednesday's attacks come a day after Lebanon and Israel's ambassadors to the United States held their first direct talks in decades in Washington and agreed to hold further direct negotiations.
The Lebanese envoy called for a ceasefire, but no truce was announced and an Israeli government spokesperson said Wednesday there was "no ceasefire discussion" with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has strongly rejected the talks.
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