BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) 鈥� The death toll from an suburb has risen to 31, including seven women and three children, Lebanon's health minister said on Saturday.
Firass Abiad told reporters 68 people were also wounded of whom 15 remain in hospital, adding that search and rescue operations were still ongoing, with the number of casualties likely to rise.
The rare strike 鈥� the deadliest targeting the Lebanese capital since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war 鈥� hit a densely populated southern neighborhood on Friday afternoon during rush hour as people returned home. Israel said it killed 11 Hezbollah operatives, including Ibrahim Akil who was in charge of the group鈥檚 elite Radwan Force. The militant group members were in a meeting in the basement of the building that was destroyed.
Hezbollah announced overnight Friday that 15 of its operatives were killed by Israeli forces, but did not elaborate on the location of these deaths.
Lebanese troops cordoned off the area preventing people from reaching the building that was knocked down as members of the Lebanese Red Cross stood nearby to take any recovered body from under the rubble. On Saturday morning, Hezbollah鈥檚 media office took journalists on a tour of the scene of the airstrike where workers were still digging through the rubble.
The Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamie told reporters at the scene that 23 people are still missing.
The airstrike on the crowded Qaim street knocked out an eight-story building that had 16 apartments and damaged another one adjacent to it. The missiles destroyed the first building and cut through the basement of the second where the meeting of Hezbollah officials was being held, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
In a nearby building, shops were badly damaged including one that sold clothes and had a sign in English that read: 鈥淒RESS LIKE YOU鈥橰E ALREADY FAMOUS.鈥�
Friday's deadly strike came hours after launched one of its most intense bombardments of northern Israel in nearly a year of fighting, largely targeting Israeli military sites. Israel鈥檚 Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted most of the Katyusha rockets.
The militant group said its latest wave of rocket salvos was a response to past Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. However, it came days after and killed at least 37 people 鈥� including two children. Some 2,900 others were wounded in the assault which has been widely attributed to Israel.
The Lebanese health minister said Saturday hospitals across the country were filled with the wounded.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attack which marked a major escalation in the past 11 months of simmering conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire regularly since Hamas鈥� 7 assault on southern Israel ignited the Israeli military鈥檚 devastating offensive in Gaza. But previous cross-border attacks have largely struck areas in northern Israel that had been evacuated and less-populated parts of southern Lebanon.
Earlier this week, Israel鈥檚 security cabinet said stopping Hezbollah鈥檚 attacks in the country鈥檚 north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal, as it considers a wider military operation in Lebanon that could spark an all-out conflict. Israel has since sent a powerful fighting force to the northern border.
The tit-for-tat strikes have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.
Five health workers killed in Gaza
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that five of its workers were killed, and five others injured, by Israeli fire that struck the ministry鈥檚 warehouses in the southern Musbah area.
Israel鈥檚 bombardment of Gaza has already killed at least , according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry, which .
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Associated Press writer Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Bassem Mroue, The Associated Press
