Smoke rises from areas targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs late on October 21, 2024. Lebanese state media reported Israeli strikes on Hezbollah's south Beirut bastion including for the first time on the Ouzai district on October 21, 2024, shortly after the Israeli army warned residents of several districts to evacuate. (Photo by Fadel ITANI / AFP)
BEIRUT: Lebanon's health ministry on Tuesday said 13 people, including a child, were killed in an Israeli strike near a south Beirut hospital.
Another 57 people were wounded in the strike late Monday near the Rafic Hariri Hospital, Lebanon's biggest public health facility, located a few kilometres from the city centre, the health ministry said.
The facility in the Jnah neighbourhood sustained minor damage in the strike, with windows shattered and its solar panels destroyed, its director said.
In the vicinity, four buildings were flattened by the strikes, said an AFP correspondent in the area.
Rescuers were on Tuesday still searching for survivors, amid fears that the toll may rise further.
The AFP correspondent at the scene heard a cell phone ringing under chunks of concrete.
Among those sifting through the rubble was resident Ola Eid who said she had watched from her balcony the previous night as her neighbourhood was bombed.
"The children were playing in the courtyard," Eid told AFP.
"I was tossing them chocolate and candy from my balcony," she added.
"Before they could even catch them, the first strike hit, then a second. I saw the children ripped apart."
The strike came as Israel targeted Beirut's southern suburbs following evacuation warnings.
The Ouzai neighbourhood, minutes away from Jnah, was hit for the first time during the conflict, Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
There was no evacuation warning for the area around the Rafic Hariri Hospital, which is densely populated and has seen an influx of people displaced from areas further south.
Health facilities in Lebanon have come into focus after Israel on Monday accused Hezbollah of storing money in a bunker under the Sahel hospital in Beirut's southern suburbs, a charge the facility's head denied.
Journalists were invited to tour the hospital on Tuesday as calls mounted for the protection of medical facilities in Lebanon.
The Sahel hospital is less than two kilometres away from the Rafic Hariri facility, and both have treated casualties of Israel's strikes.
Nearly a month of war between Israel and Hezbollah has killed at least 1,489 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, and displaced more than a million others.
The latest strikes on Ouzai and Jnah triggered an exodus of residents, piling more pressure on shelters struggling to accomodate the displaced.
( Source : AFP )
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